Abstract:

The end of frequency scaling means that the search for performance must turn
elsewhere, and will inevitably require improvements in transistor efficiency
that can only be obtained by specializing hardware to programs.  So begins
the age of heterogeneous machines.

The goal of the Liquid Metal project at IBM Research is to enable the use of
these heterogeneous machines by providing a single programming language that 
can be compiled, executed, and dynamically migrated across a very diverse set 
of systems: CPUs, GPUs, reconfigurable hardware (FPGAs), Cell-style processors,
etc.  

Achieving this goal requires significant innovation across the entire
system:
language design, compiler technology, interactive development environment,
debugging, hardware synthesis, the run-time system, performance analysis,
and hardware protocols. 

I will give an overview of the Liquid Metal language and the system we have
built, demonstrate dynamic execution across multiple platforms, present some
initial performance results, and describe challenges for the future.

Joint work with Joshua Auerbach, Perry Cheng, Stephen Fink, Rodric Rabbah,
Sunil Shukla (IBM Research), Yu Zhang (IBM China), and Christophe Dubach
(U. Edinburgh). 

http://www.research.ibm.com/liquidmetal/


Short Bio: 
David F. Bacon is a Research Staff Member at IBM's T.J. Watson Research
Center. He led the Metronome project which pioneered hard real-time garbage
collection, opening the use of high-level languages like Java for
time-critical systems in financial trading, aerospace, defense, video
gaming, and telecommunications.

His current work focuses on the creation of a language and associated
compiler technology to allow fluid programming of software and
reconfigurable hardware, to "JIT the hardware" -- a project called Liquid
Metal.

Dr. Bacon's algorithms are included in most compilers and run-time systems
for modern object-oriented languages, and he holds 11 patents in these
areas. His work on Thin Locks was selected as one of the most influential
contributions in the 20 years of the Programming Language Design and
Implementation (PLDI) conference. He received his Ph.D. in computer science
from the University of California, Berkeley and his A.B. from Columbia
University. During 2009 he was a Visiting Professor at the Harvard
University Computer Science Department. He is a member of the IBM Academy of
Technology, has served on the governing boards of ACM SIGPLAN and SIGBED,
and is an ACM Fellow. 



Refreshments served from 14:15 on,
 	Lecture starts at 14:30