Towards a Semantics-Aware Code Transformation Toolchain for Heterogeneous Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a flexible, semantics-aware code transformation environment in Haskell that optimizes scientific C code for heterogeneous systems by allowing user-defined transformation rules based on semantic annotations.

Contribution

It presents a novel, architecture-agnostic transformation toolchain that enables customizable, semantic-driven code optimization for heterogeneous computing platforms.

Findings

Supports user-defined transformation rules

Transforms architecture-agnostic C code effectively

Enhances performance portability across platforms

Abstract

Obtaining good performance when programming heterogeneous computing platforms poses significant challenges. We present a program transformation environment, implemented in Haskell, where architecture-agnostic scientific C code with semantic annotations is transformed into functionally equivalent code better suited for a given platform. The transformation steps are represented as rules that can be fired when certain syntactic and semantic conditions are fulfilled. These rules are not hard-wired into the rewriting engine: they are written in a C-like language and are automatically processed and incorporated into the rewriting engine. That makes it possible for end-users to add their own rules or to provide sets of rules that are adapted to certain specific domains or purposes.