Report of research results

After the first Cluster Meeting we have decided to keep on working together. We will be setting the bases for a project proposal, or at least a work package in a large project. In the meanwhile, we have detected a good amount of common interests and overlap, enough to work on the already started extension of the existing tools to new and more challenging problems.
We are considering several working directions:

1) Diablo framework extensions
- Support for dynamically linked programs. Support for exceptions handling.
- Whole system optimization. To the current Linux kernel optimization, we want to consider optimizations across multiple software layers, like libraries, middleware runtimes, virtual machines and the operating system. - Improve speed/size optimization of binaries. We would like to continue working on code reorganization, instrumentation tools, profile-guided and low level binary optimizations.
- Optimize for power consumption. Based on the experience at UPC, we would like to annotate the code with energy consumption measurements, and apply a power budget to the optimizations.
- New backends: In addition to the current ARM, X86 and IA64 backends, a need to support at least the Power PC architecture has been detected.

2) Apply the link-time optimization framework to demonstrate the benefits at different software layers and to the whole system. We will continue to reduce system call overheads, perform system call cloning and extend constant propagation across boundaries. We plan to do optimizations for high end machines that are currently built with power aware performance processors. We are also opening the field to reconfigurable cores based on PPC processors.

3) Publicize the Diablo environment and related tools to the community in order to stimulate the usage of the toolset.
A possible short term action may be a 1-day/2-day course on Diablo, open to everybody, or a tutorial in a related conference.

- Extend the cluster to other HiPEAC members: Delft Univ. and Complutense University (Madrid) seemed to be interested. Involve companies, like IMEC, Nokia, Symbian or IBM.

Ghent:
- 5000 euro for the cluster meetings
- 500 euro per participant for the course (5000 for 10 participants)

UPC:
- PhD. Student fellowship: 6600 euro
- 4000 euro for the cluster meetings

Marisa Gil (UPC) , Bjorn De Sutter, Dominique Chanet, Ludo Van Put (UGhent)