Compiling Algorithms for Heterogeneous Systems

Abstract Most emerging applications in imaging and machine learning must perform immense amounts of computation while holding to strict limits on energy and power. To meet these goals, architects are building increasingly specialized compute engines tailored for these specific tasks. The resulting computer systems are heterogeneous, containing multiple processing cores with wildly different execution models. Unfortunately, the cost of producing this specialized hardware—and the software to control it—is astronomical. Moreover, the task of porting algorithms to these heterogeneous machines typically requires that the algorithm be partitioned across the machine and rewritten for each specific architecture, which is time consuming and prone to error. Over the last several years, the authors have approached this problem using domain-specific languages (DSLs): high-level programming languages customized for specific domains, such as database manipulation, machine learning, or image processing. By giving up gen...