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The
Scalable Parallel Computing Lab's SPCL_Bcast
seminar continues with Albert Cohen
of Google presenting on Can I
Cook a 5 o'clock Compiler Cake and Eat
It at 2? Everyone is welcome to
attend (over Zoom)!
When:
Thursday, 7th December, 9AM CET
Where: Zoom
Abstract:
In high-performance computing words: can
we build a compiler that will eventually
save a lot of performance engineering
effort while immediately delivering
competitive results? Here,
competitiveness refers to achieving near
hardware peak-performance for important
applications. The question is
particularly hot in a domain-specific
setting, where the building blocks for
constructing an effective optimizing
compiler may be inadequate, too generic,
or too low-level. It is widely
understood that compiler construction
has failed to deliver early afternoon
sweets. I personally feel bad about it,
but until recently it remained an
academic exercise to challenge the
status quo. Maybe it is now time to
reconsider this assumption: ML-enhanced
compilers become the norm rather than
the exception. New compiler frameworks
reconcile optimizations for the common
case with application-specific
performance. Domain-specific code
generators play an essential role in the
implementation of dense and sparse
numerical libraries. But even with the
help of domain-specific compilers, peak
performance can only be achieved at the
expense of a dramatic loss of
programmability. Are we ever going to
find a way out of this
programmability/performance dilemma?
What about the velocity and agility of
compiler engineers? Can we make ML-based
heuristics scalable enough to compile
billions of lines of code? Can we do so
while enabling massive code reuse across
domains, languages and hardware? We will
review these questions, based on recent
successes and half-successes in academia
and industry. We will also form an
invitation to tackle these challenges in
future research and software
development.
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Biography:
Albert Cohen is a research
scientist at Google. An alumnus
of École Normale Supérieure de
Lyon and the University of
Versailles, he has been a
research scientist at Inria, a
visiting scholar at the
University of Illinois, an
invited professor at Philips
Research, and a visiting
scientist at Facebook Artificial
Intelligence Research. Albert
works on parallelizing,
optimizing and machine learning
compilers, and on dataflow and
synchronous programming
languages, with applications to
high-performance computing,
artificial intelligence and
reactive control.
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More details
& future talks
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