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Prof. Dr. Roland Leißa , University of Mannheim

An Extensible, Higher-Order Intermediate Representation

10.10.2022 (Monday) , 11:00
Andreas-Pfitzmann-Bau, Room 1096 , Nöthnitzer Straße 46 , 01187 Dresden

Classic compilers that argue about and optimize low-level program
representations are not sufficient to tackle many modern computationally
expensive applications such as image processing, machine learning, or
simulation software. Optimizations should happen at a much higher-level
that actually understand the primitive operations of the specific
application domain. In addition, we would like to generate
high-performance code for various highly parallel devices like multicore
CPUs with SIMD instructions or GPUs.

Compilers for domain-specific languages (DSLs) such as Halide or XLA
exactly fulfill these requirements. However, DSL compilers reinvent the
wheel over and over again as standard optimizations, code generators,
and general infrastructure & boilerplate code must be reimplemented for
each application domain.

This talk presents Thorin, an extensible, higher-order intermediate
representation. At its core, Thorin is a pure type system and, hence, a
form of a typed lambda calculus. Users can add new operations - called
axioms - simply by declaring them. These axioms may be opaque functions,
type operators, or any other entity with a possibly polymorphic and/or
dependent type. This way users can extend Thorin with new operations at
any low or high level and bundle them in a so-called dialect. A plugin
architecture allows to define new optimizations that interact with
axioms and other optimizations defined in other dialects in the most
optimal way without suffering from the infamous phase-ordering problem.

Roland Leißa completed his MSc in Computer Science at the University of
Münster in 2010. He did his PhD and postdoc at the Saarland University
in Saarbrücken and has been junior professor for programming languages
and compiler design at the University of Mannheim since 2021.

The focus of his research is the development of innovative programming
languages and compilers that enable the programming of portable and
high-performance applications for modern computer architectures. He is
particularly interested in various forms of parallelization. As our
computing landscape becomes more and more heterogeneous, such tools are
exceedingly important. His work attaches great importance to abstracting
concrete application problems from industry and research such as
simulation software with theoretically sound methods and thereby
creating higher-level and reusable solutions.

Join the lecture via zoom:

Time: Oct 10, 2022 11:00 AM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna

https://tu-dresden.zoom.us/j/61741587179?pwd=Tzh1REdVT2hkYXBHRjJQcjZ6Wjdhdz09

Meeting ID: 617 4158 7179
Passcode: +17Tu#Xg

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