Abstract:
Supercompilation is a compile-time, source-to-source optimising transformation. Among other benefits, it can remove intermediate data structures and specialise higher order functions. The Reduceron is an FPGA-based soft processor for executing lazy functional programs by graph reduction. The special purpose processor can perform in parallel many of the steps required for each reduction and can even perform some reductions speculatively.
How does the combination of these technologies affect program execution times? In this talk, we shall describe the characteristics and benefits of both supercompilation and the Reduceron. We shall discuss how the two may interact, particularly with regard to the speculative evaluation facilities of the Reduceron, and we present results for a number of benchmarks.
Note: Supersedes (and corrects) that given in the PLASMA research group seminar.