SHF: Small: Specializing Compilers For High Performance Computing Through Coordinated Data and Algorithm Optimizations

这项研究为开发编译器带来了一种新的方法，其中软件应用程序的数据结构和算法实现被独立地标准化并归类为常见的模式，编译器优化被制成可以灵活组合的可定制组件，并且所有优化被密切协调和共同专门化以获得最高级别的性能。基于模式的专门化专门针对对科学计算至关重要的多个领域，例如密集/稀疏矩阵码、模板计算和图形/机器学习算法。为开发人员提供了统一的注释接口，以简明地记录由不同的领域特定和并行编程库提供的抽象的高级语义，从而允许开发专门定制的库感知编译器，该编译器可以自动协调库抽象的使用，以最大化大规模多处理器应用的整体性能。自动优化优化支持是为了支持应用程序在现代异构计算平台上的性能可移植性。这项研究的成果包括一组专门的编译器优化器，在线分布的开源，以及相关的自动优化工具包，以针对不同的现代多核和GPU平台，并提供图形用户界面，供用户交互调用这些优化器。这些优化器及其交互式配置界面有望从根本上改变开发高性能计算应用程序的方式，同时为计算专家提供一个工具集，以自动生成优化的库内核，而无需手动编写汇编代码。

This research brings about a new methodology for developing compilers, where the data structure and algorithm implementations of software applications are independently normalized and categorized into commonly occurring patterns, compiler optimizations are made customizable components that can be flexibly composed, and all optimizations are closely coordinated and collectively specialized to attain a highest level of performance. The pattern-based specialization specifically targets a number of domains, e.g., dense/sparse matrix codes, stencil computations, and graph/machine learning algorithms, which are critical to scientific computing. A uniform annotation interface is provided for developers to concisely document the higher-level semantics of abstractions provided by varying domain-specific and parallel programming libraries, thereby allowing the development of specially customized library-aware compilers that can automatically coordinate the uses of library abstractions to maximize the overall performance of large scale multiprocessor applications. Automated optimization tuning support is provided to support the performance portability of applications on modern heterogeneous computing platforms.The deliverables of this research include a collection of specialized compiler optimizers, distributed open source online, with associated auto-tuning toolkits to target them for varying modern multi-core and GPU platforms, and with a graphical user interface for users to interactively invoke these optimizers. These optimizers, together with their interactive configuration interfaces, are expected to fundamentally change how high performance computing applications are developed, while providing computational specialists a toolset to automatically generate optimized library kernels without manually composing assembly codes.