research-article

First-class runtime generation of high-performance types using exotypes

Authors:

Zachary DeVito,

Daniel Ritchie,

Pat HanrahanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 49, Issue 6

Pages 77 - 88

https://doi.org/10.1145/2666356.2594307

Published: 09 June 2014 Publication History

Abstract

We introduce exotypes, user-defined types that combine the flexibility of meta-object protocols in dynamically-typed languages with the performance control of low-level languages. Like objects in dynamic languages, exotypes are defined programmatically at run-time, allowing behavior based on external data such as a database schema. To achieve high performance, we use staged programming to define the behavior of an exotype during a runtime compilation step and implement exotypes in Terra, a low-level staged programming language.

We show how exotype constructors compose, and use exotypes to implement high-performance libraries for serialization, dynamic assembly, automatic differentiation, and probabilistic programming. Each exotype achieves expressiveness similar to libraries written in dynamically-typed languages but implements optimizations that exceed the performance of existing libraries written in low-level statically-typed languages. Though each implementation is significantly shorter, our serialization library is 11 times faster than Kryo, and our dynamic assembler is 3--20 times faster than Google's Chrome assembler.

References

[1]

D. Ancona, M. Ancona, A. Cuni, and N. D. Matsakis. RPython: a step towards reconciling dynamically and statically typed OO languages. In DLS, 2007.

Digital Library

[2]

E. Burmako. Scala macros: let our powers combine!: on how rich syntax and static types work with metaprogramming. In SCALA, 2013.

Digital Library

[3]

S. Chiba. A metaobject protocol for c++. In OOPSLA, 1995.

Digital Library

[4]

A. Chlipala. Ur: Statically-typed metaprogramming with type-level record computation. In PLDI, 2010.

Digital Library

[5]

G. Corliss, C. Faure, A. Griewank, L. Hascoët, and U. Naumann, editors. Automatic Differentiation of Algorithms: From Simulation to Optimization, Computer and Information Science, New York, 2002. Springer.

Digital Library

[6]

L. P. Deutsch and A. M. Schiffman. Efficient implementation of the Smalltalk-80 system. In POPL, 1984.

Digital Library

[7]

Z. DeVito, J. Hegarty, A. Aiken, P. Hanrahan, and J. Vitek. Terra: a multi-stage language for high-performance computing. In PLDI, 2013.

Digital Library

[8]

E. Gamma, R. Helm, R. Johnson, and J. Vlissides. Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing, Boston, 1995.

Digital Library

[9]

N. D. Goodman, V. K. Mansinghka, D. M. Roy, K. Bonawitz, and J. B. Tenenbaum. Church: a language for generative models. In UAI, 2008.

Digital Library

[10]

Google.V8 Javascript engine. http://code.google.com/p/v8.

[11]

Google. Protocol buffers. https://code.google.com/p/protobuf

[12]

J. Hannemann and G. Kiczales. Design pattern implementation in Java and AspectJ. In OOPSLA, 2002.

Digital Library

[13]

U. Hölzle and D. Ungar. Optimizing dynamically-dispatched calls with run-time type feedback. In PLDI, 1994.

Digital Library

[14]

R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, and W. Celes. The evolution of lua. In HOPL, 2007.

Digital Library

[15]

G. Kiczales and J. D. Rivieres. The Art of the Metaobject Protocol. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991.

Digital Library

[16]

O. Kiselyov and C. Shan. Embedded probabilistic programming. In DSL, 2009.

Digital Library

[17]

J. Lamping, G. Kiczales, L. H. Rodriguez, Jr., and E. Ruf. An architecture for an open compiler. In IMSA'92 workshop on reflection and meta-level architectures, 1992.

[18]

Y. LeCun, L. Bottou, Y. Bengio, and P. Haffner. Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition. In Proc. of the IEEE, 1998.

[19]

R. Neal. MCMC using hamiltonian dynamics. Handbook of Markov Chain Monte Carlo, CRC Press, London, 2011.

[20]

G. Neverov and P. Roe. Metaphor: a multi-staged, object-oriented programming language. In GPCE, 2004.

[21]

P. Norvig. Design patterns in dynamic programming. In Object World, 1996.

[22]

Oracle. Java object serialization spec. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/platform/serialization/spec/serialTOC.html.

[23]

M. Pall. The LuaJIT project. http://luajit.org.

[24]

T. Rompf, A. K. Sujeeth, N. Amin, K. J. Brown, V. Jovanovic, H. Lee, M. Jonnalagedda, K. Olukotun, and M. Odersky. Optimizing data structures in high-level programs: new directions for extensible compilers based on staging. In POPL, 2013.

Digital Library

[25]

Stan Development Team. Stan: A C++ library for probability and sampling. http://mc-stan.org/.

[26]

N. Sweet. Kryo: Fast, efficient Java serialization and cloning. https://code.google.com/p/kryo

[27]

D. Syme, K. Battocchi, K. Takeda, D. Malayeri, J. Fisher, J. Hu, T Liu, B. McNamara, D. Quirk, M. Taveggia, W. Chae, U. Matsveyeu, and T. Petricek. F#3.0 - strongly-typed language support for internet-scale information sources. Technical report, 2012. http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=173076.

[28]

W. Taha. A gentle introduction to multi-stage programming. In Domain-Specific Program Generation, 2004.

[29]

W. Taha and T. Sheard. MetaML and multi-stage programming with explicit annotations. In Theoretical Computer Science, 1999.

Digital Library

[30]

J. Talbot, Z. DeVito, and P. Hanrahan. Riposte: a trace-driven compiler and parallel vm for vector code in r. In PACT, 2012.

Digital Library

[31]

D. Wingate, A. Stuhlmüller, and N. D. Goodman. Lightweight implementations of probabilistic programming languages via transformational compilation. In AISTATS, 2011.

Cited By

Xu HKjolstad F(2021)Copy-and-patch compilation: a fast compilation algorithm for high-level languages and bytecodeProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34855135:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485513
Brahmakshatriya AAmarasinghe SLee J(2021)BuildItProceedings of the 2021 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization10.1109/CGO51591.2021.9370333(39-51)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CGO51591.2021.9370333
Chari GGarbervetsky DMarr SIerusalimschy R(2016)Building efficient and highly run-time adaptable virtual machinesProceedings of the 12th Symposium on Dynamic Languages10.1145/2989225.2989234(60-71)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2989225.2989234
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

First-class runtime generation of high-performance types using exotypes
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Source code generation

Recommendations

Terra: a multi-stage language for high-performance computing
PLDI '13

High-performance computing applications, such as auto-tuners and domain-specific languages, rely on generative programming techniques to achieve high performance and portability. However, these systems are often implemented in multiple disparate ...
First-class runtime generation of high-performance types using exotypes
PLDI '14: Proceedings of the 35th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

We introduce exotypes, user-defined types that combine the flexibility of meta-object protocols in dynamically-typed languages with the performance control of low-level languages. Like objects in dynamic languages, exotypes are defined programmatically ...
Terra: a multi-stage language for high-performance computing
PLDI '13: Proceedings of the 34th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

High-performance computing applications, such as auto-tuners and domain-specific languages, rely on generative programming techniques to achieve high performance and portability. However, these systems are often implemented in multiple disparate ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 49, Issue 6

PLDI '14

June 2014

598 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2666356

Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Issue’s Table of Contents

PLDI '14: Proceedings of the 35th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation
June 2014
619 pages
ISBN:9781450327848
DOI:10.1145/2594291
General Chair:
Michael O'Boyle
University of Edinburgh
,
Program Chair:
Keshav Pingali
University of Texas, Austin

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 June 2014

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 49, Issue 6

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

15
Total Citations
View Citations
335
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)9
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 25 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Xu HKjolstad F(2021)Copy-and-patch compilation: a fast compilation algorithm for high-level languages and bytecodeProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34855135:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485513
Brahmakshatriya AAmarasinghe SLee J(2021)BuildItProceedings of the 2021 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization10.1109/CGO51591.2021.9370333(39-51)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CGO51591.2021.9370333
Chari GGarbervetsky DMarr SIerusalimschy R(2016)Building efficient and highly run-time adaptable virtual machinesProceedings of the 12th Symposium on Dynamic Languages10.1145/2989225.2989234(60-71)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2989225.2989234
Clark TFuentes LBatory DCzarnecki K(2016)Static meta-object protocols: towards efficient reflective object-oriented languagesCompanion Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2892664.2892694(160-167)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2892664.2892694
Rompf T(2016)The Essence of Multi-stage Evaluation in LMSA List of Successes That Can Change the World10.1007/978-3-319-30936-1_17(318-335)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30936-1_17
Parreaux LShaikhha AErwig MGray J(2020)Multi-stage programming in the large with staged classesProceedings of the 19th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences10.1145/3425898.3426961(35-49)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3425898.3426961
Rompf TBrown KSchultz UYallop J(2017)Functional parallels of sequential imperatives (short paper)Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation10.1145/3018882.3018891(83-88)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3018882.3018891
Chari GGarbervetsky DMarr S(2016)Building efficient and highly run-time adaptable virtual machinesACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093334.298923452:2(60-71)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093334.2989234
Rompf TBiboudis AJonnalagedda MStucki SUreche V(2016)Reflections on LMS: exploring front-end alternativesProceedings of the 2016 7th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Scala10.1145/2998392.2998399(41-50)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2998392.2998399
Chari GGarbervetsky DMarr SIerusalimschy R(2016)Building efficient and highly run-time adaptable virtual machinesProceedings of the 12th Symposium on Dynamic Languages10.1145/2989225.2989234(60-71)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2989225.2989234
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents