Compilation Techniques for High Level Parallel Code

Abstract

This paper describes methods to adapt existing optimizing compilers for sequential languages to produce code for parallel processors. In particular it looks at targeting data-parallel processors using SIMD (single instruction multiple data) or vector processors where users need features similar to high-level control flow across the data-parallelism. The premise of the paper is that we do not want to write an optimizing compiler from scratch. Rather, a method is described that allows a developer to take an existing compiler for a sequential language and modify it to handle SIMD extensions. As well as modifying the front-end, the intermediate representation and the code generation to handle the parallelism, specific optimizations are described to target the architecture efficiently.