Generating an Efficient Compiler for a Data Parallel Language from a Denotational Specification

• Main Authors: Johan Ringström, Peter Fritzson, Mikael Pettersson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1994
• Subjects: DML
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.53.1145

. There are very few examples of the generation of efficient compilers from denotational specifications. Usually such compilers generate code which is orders of magnitude slower than from hand-written ones. However, as has been demonstrated by our DML (Denotational Meta Language) compiler generation system, through appropriate single-threading analysis it is possible to obtain code of comparable quality to hand-written compilers. Another problem with denotational specifications is, because of their denotational nature, the need to introduce complicated power domains to model non-determinism and parallelism. In this work we have used a more practical two-level approach: use denotational specifications to model the meaning of the source language in terms of an abstract machine of low-level operations, including data-parallel operations. Then use operational semantics for the specification of this abstract machine. This paper reports experience from building a prototype compiler for a sma.