A Composable Array Function Interface for Heterogeneous Computing in Java

Fumero, J. J., Steuwer, M. and Dubach, C. (2014) A Composable Array Function Interface for Heterogeneous Computing in Java. In: ARRAY'14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Libraries, Languages, and Compilers for Array Programming, Edinburgh, UK, 09-11 Jun 2014, pp. 44-49. ISBN 9781450329378 (doi: 10.1145/2627373.2627381)

Abstract

Heterogeneous computing has now become mainstream with virtually every desktop machines featuring accelerators such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). While heterogeneity offers the promise of high-performance and high-efficiency, it comes at the cost of huge programming difficulties. Languages and interfaces for programming such system tend to be low-level and require expert knowledge of the hardware in order to achieve its potential. A promising approach for programming such heterogeneous systems is the use of array programming. This style of programming relies on well known parallel patterns that can be easily translated into GPU or other accelerator code. However, only little work has been done on integrating such concepts in mainstream languages such as Java. In this work, we propose a new Array Function interface implemented with the new features from Java 8. While similar in spirit to the new Stream API of Java, our API follows a different design based on reusability and composability. We demonstrate that this API can be used to generate OpenCL code for a simple application. We present encouraging preliminary performance results showing the potential of our approach.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Steuwer, Dr Michel
• Authors: Fumero, J. J., Steuwer, M., and Dubach, C.
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Publisher: ACM
• ISBN: 9781450329378
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2014 ACM
• First Published: First published in ARRAY'14 Proceedings of ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Libraries, Languages, and Compilers for Array Programming: 44-49
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy