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1. Sparse Format Conversion and Code Synthesis

   Tobi Popoola ( April 2023 , ProQuest dissertations theses global)

   Cathie Olschanowsky (Ed.)

   Sparse computations are important in scientific computing. Many scientific applications compute on sparse data. Data is said to be sparse if it has a relatively small number of non-zeros. Sparse formats use auxiliary arrays to store non-zeros, as a result, the contents of auxiliary arrays are not known until run-time. The Inspector/Executor (I/E) paradigm uses run-time information for compiler optimizations. An inspector computes information at run-time to drive transformations. The executor—a compile-time transformation of the original code— uses information computed by the inspector. The sparse polyhedral framework (SPF) encompasses a series of tools to support I/E run-time transformations. This work introduces a unified framework that wraps SPF tools while providing a holistic view of computation as an intermediate representation (IR). This work also introduces a method to automatically synthesize inspectors to transform between sparse formats and improvements to SPF to explore the performance of irregular applications. 

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2. Compiler-Driven Simulation of Reconfigurable Hardware Accelerators

   https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCA53966.2022.00052  

   Li, Zhijing ; Ye, Yuwei ; Neuendorffer, Stephen ; Sampson, Adrian ( April 2022 , 2022 IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA))

   As customized accelerator design has become increasingly popular to keep up with the demand for high performance computing, it poses challenges for modern simulator design to adapt to such a large variety of accelerators. Existing simulators tend to two extremes: low-level and general approaches, such as RTL simulation, that can model any hardware but require substantial effort and long execution times; and higher-level application-specific models that can be much faster and easier to use but require one-off engineering effort.This work proposes a compiler-driven simulation workflow that can model configurable hardware accelerator. The key idea is to separate structure representation from simulation by developing an intermediate language that can flexibly represent a wide variety of hardware constructs. We design the Event Queue (EQueue) dialect of MLIR, a dialect that can model arbitrary hardware accelerators with explicit data movement and distributed event-based control; we also implement a generic simulation engine to model EQueue programs with hybrid MLIR dialects representing different abstraction levels. We demonstrate two case studies of EQueue-implemented accelerators: the systolic array of convolution and SIMD processors in a modern FPGA. In the former we show EQueue simulation is as accurate as a state-of-the-art simulator, while offering higher extensibility and lower iteration cost via compiler passes. In the latter we demonstrate our simulation flow can guide designer efficiently improve their design using visualizable simulation outputs. 

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3. Techniques for Managing Polyhedral Dataflow Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99372-6_9  

   Shankar, Ravi ; Orenstein, Aaron ; Rift, Anna ; Popoola, Tobi ; Lowe ; MacDonald ; Yang, Shuai ; Mikesell, T. Dylan ; Olschanowsky, Catherine ( October 2021 , Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing: 34th International Workshop, LCPC 2021)

   Scientific applications, especially legacy applications, contain a wealth of scientific knowledge. As hardware changes, applications need to be ported to new architectures and extended to include scientific advances. As a result, it is common to encounter problems like performance bottlenecks and dead code. A visual representation of the dataflow can help performance experts identify and debug such problems. The Computation API of the sparse polyhedral framework (SPF) provides a single entry point for tools to generate and manipulate polyhedral dataflow graphs, and transform applications. However, when viewing graphs generated for scientific applications there are several barriers. The graphs are large, and manipulating their layout to respect execution order is difficult. This paper presents a case study that uses the Computation API to represent a scientific application, GeoAc, in the SPF. Generated polyhedral dataflow graphs were explored for optimization opportunities and limitations were addressed using several graph simplifications to improve their usability. 

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4. Abstractions for specifying sparse matrix data transformations

   Nandy, Payal ; Hall, M ; Davis, E ; Olschanowsky, C ; Mohammadi, M ; He, W ; Strout, M ( January 2018 , Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop on Polyhedral Compilation Techniques)

   The inspector/executor paradigm permits using runtime information in concert with compiler optimization. An inspector collects information that is only available at runtime; this information is used by an optimized executor that was created at compile time. Inspectors are widely used in optimizing irregular computations, where information about data dependences, loop bounds, data structures, and memory access pa erns are collected at runtime and used to guide code transformation, parallelization, and data layout. Most research that uses inspectors relies on instantiating inspector templates, invoking inspector library code, or manually writing inspectors. is paper describes abstractions for generating inspectors for loop and data transformations for sparse matrix computations using the Sparse Polyhedral Framework (SPF). SPF is an extension of the polyhedral framework for transformation and code generation. SPF extends the polyhedral framework to represent runtime information with uninterpreted functions and inspector computations that explicitly realize such functions at runtime. It has previously been used to derive inspectors for data and iteration space reordering. is paper introduces data transformations into SPF, such as conversions between sparse matrix formats, and show how prior work can be supported by SPF. We also discuss possible extensions to support inspector composition and incorporate other optimizations. is work represents a step towards creating composable inspectors in keeping with the composability of a ne transformations on the executors. 

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5. Polyhedral Specification and Code Generation of Sparse Tensor Contraction with Co-iteration

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3566054  

   Zhao, Tuowen ; Popoola, Tobi ; Hall, Mary ; Olschanowsky, Catherine ; Strout, Michelle ( March 2023 , ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization)

   This article presents a code generator for sparse tensor contraction computations. It leverages a mathematical representation of loop nest computations in the sparse polyhedral framework (SPF), which extends the polyhedral model to support non-affine computations, such as those that arise in sparse tensors. SPF is extended to perform layout specification, optimization, and code generation of sparse tensor code: (1) We develop a polyhedral layout specification that decouples iteration spaces for layout and computation; and (2) we develop efficient co-iteration of sparse tensors by combining polyhedra scanning over the layout of one sparse tensor with the synthesis of code to find corresponding elements in other tensors through an SMT solver. We compare the generated code with that produced by a state-of-the-art tensor compiler, TACO. We achieve on average 1.63× faster parallel performance than TACO on sparse-sparse co-iteration and describe how to improve that to 2.72× average speedup by switching the find algorithms. We also demonstrate that decoupling iteration spaces of layout and computation enables additional layout and computation combinations to be supported. 

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