CAREER: Programming Heterogeneous Memory Hierarchies

这个项目解决了计算领域一个新兴的、不可避免的问题：如何明确地管理使用不同类型内存技术的计算机。该项目的新颖之处在于管理这些机器的新编程语言机制，以及相关的性能改进。从程序员的角度来看，项目的影响是对这些机器的更简单和更有效的管理。这些混合内存机器的必然性，以及它们作为数据中心通用计算平台的部署，意味着它们的有效使用是国家重要的问题，在学术界、工业和国防领域有各种应用（例如基因测序、天气预报、经济模型模拟和反恐监测）。通过为这些机器创新编程和教育工具，该项目有助于增强建筑在众多经济和国家安全应用中的效用和性能。该项目旨在从特定角度解决异构内存机器编程的问题，即语言级接口和相关的编译器和运行时技术。该项目将通过(1)开发一种灵活的类型系统来表达存储在异构内存机器上的数据，(2)开发针对异构内存及其相关语义问题定制的编译器优化，以及(3)集成运行时技术来减轻异构内存机器的性能问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project tackles an emerging and inevitable problem within computing: how to explicitly manage computers that use different types of memory technologies. The project's novelties are new programming language mechanisms for managing these machines, with associated improvements in performance. The project's impacts are the simpler and more efficient management of these machines from the programmer's perspective. The inevitability of these mixed memory machines, along with their deployment as a common computing platform in the data center, means that their efficient use is matter of national import, with varied applications in academia, industry, and defense (e.g. genetic sequencing, weather prediction, economic model simulation, and counterterrorism monitoring). By innovating programmatic and educational tools for these machines, this project serves to enhance the architecture's utility and performance across numerous economic and national security applications.The project's aims tackle the problem of programming heterogeneous memory machines from specific angles, namely, the language level interface and associated compiler and runtime techniques. The project will proceed by (1) developing a flexible type system that can express data stored across the heterogeneous memory machine, (2) develop compiler optimizations customized to the problems of heterogeneous memories and their associated semantics, and (3) integrate runtime techniques for mitigating performance problems of heterogeneous memory machines.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.