Notes from the Compiler Group Meeting

The compiler group identified the following as challenges and directions for future research:

• Responding to various quality-of-service (QoS) levels.
  
  • Support similar to virtual memory.
    
  • Dynamic support vs. what can be done statically.
    
  • Programmer specified vs. automatic (preferred).
    
  • Need something in instruction set to support this?
    
    • Memory subsystem performance reporting.
      
    • Programmable/active agents in the memory system.
      
      • Willing to execute anything withing a specified time limit.
        
• Liquid architecture / reconfigurable logic.
  
  • Multigrandular configuration of data.
    
  • Architecture support for dynamic optimization.
    
    • e.g., modifiable cache.
• Value predicition, trace caches, etc., (i.e., all the stuff between the VM and the base hardware) can be done in software.
  
• Why is a hardware solution often perceived as being better than a software solution?
  
• Correctness!
  
  • Always of paramount importance.
    
• New semantics needed for multi-threading.
  
  • e.g., weaker semantics for memory consistency.