Theories and Tools for Sustainable Programming

可持续规划的理论和工具

• 批准号: RGPIN-2017-06692
• 负责人: Sekerinski, Emil
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: McMaster University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=664696
• 关键词: Theories; Tools; Sustainable; Programming

According to a study by the International Energy Agency in 2013, the power consumption of electronic devices is climbing 6% per year, twice the increase in overall global consumption. Natural Resources Canada estimates that 10% of household electricity goes into electronic devices. Independent of that, the effectiveness of code reuse has lead to code size and complexity that makes programs need more hardware and maintenance resources than ideally and makes hard guarantees about reliability difficult. Given our increased reliance on computing devices in communication, transportation, health, etc., these contradictory trends are difficult to sustain. We intend to advance programming techniques that address power consumption, reliability, and code reuse through lean programming.***At the "low end" of computing, sensor networks have gained traction, e.g. for indoor/outdoor guidance, urban planning, structural integrity monitoring, building automation, environmental monitoring, farming, and asset management. Ultra-low-power processors of such sensors can be powered by harvesting energy, e.g. solar, thermal, motion, sound, moisture, and RF fields, and are expected to perform without maintenance for years, e.g. embedded in concrete. We intend to propose a method for reliable intermittent computation with unreliable energy sources. Recently, we developed pState, a tool for the design of embedded systems that includes correctness analysis, quantitative analysis (e.g. power consumption, transmission reliability, message delay), code generation, and worst-case execution time analysis. We plan to implement intermittent computations by generating code that uses a combination of volatile and non-volatile memory and extend pState's analysis to the reliability of intermittent computations.***At the "high end" of computing, the increase in the number of processor cores since 2005 allowed an increase in performance while keeping power consumption constant. Although multi-core processors are common in smartphones and data centers, popular programming models do not scale well with the number of cores. Guarded atomic actions are appealing as they are "higher level" and easier to use than explicit signaling and message passing as commonly found. Our recent work has shown how guarded atomic actions in concurrent objects can be implemented highly efficiently and scale well with the number of cores. We plan to develop a production-quality programming language based on guarded atomic actions and address three research questions: (1) how to handle properly exceptions in atomic actions, (2) how to support code reuse through dynamic mixins, as a flexible and safe composition mechanism, with atomic actions, and (3) how to introduce ownership in such a language to allow better static checking, simplify correctness conditions, and improve code efficiency.

根据国际能源署2013年的一项研究，电子设备的功耗每年攀升6%，是全球总能耗增幅的两倍。加拿大自然资源部估计，10% 的家庭用电用于电子设备。除此之外，代码重用的有效性导致了代码的大小和复杂性，使得程序需要比理想情况更多的硬件和维护资源，并且使得可靠性的硬保证变得困难。鉴于我们在通信、交通、健康等方面对计算设备的依赖日益增加，这些矛盾的趋势难以维持。我们打算通过精益编程来推进解决功耗、可靠性和代码重用问题的编程技术。***在计算的“低端”，传感器网络已经获得了关注，例如，传感器网络。用于室内/室外指导、城市规划、结构完整性监测、楼宇自动化、环境监测、农业和资产管理。此类传感器的超低功耗处理器可以通过收集能量来供电，例如太阳能、热力、运动、声音、湿度和射频场，预计可在无需维护的情况下运行多年，例如嵌入混凝土中。我们打算提出一种使用不可靠能源进行可靠间歇计算的方法。最近，我们开发了 pState，一个用于嵌入式系统设计的工具，包括正确性分析、定量分析（例如功耗、传输可靠性、消息延迟）、代码生成和最坏情况执行时间分析。我们计划通过生成使用易失性和非易失性存储器组合的代码来实现间歇性计算，并将 pState 的分析扩展到间歇性计算的可靠性。***在计算的“高端”，处理器数量的增加自 2005 年以来的核心允许在保持功耗恒定的同时提高性能。尽管多核处理器在智能手机和数据中心中很常见，但流行的编程模型并不能很好地随着内核数量的扩展而扩展。受保护的原子操作很有吸引力，因为它们比常见的显式信号和消息传递“更高级别”并且更易于使用。我们最近的工作展示了如何高效地实现并发对象中受保护的原子操作，并随着核心数量的增加而很好地扩展。我们计划开发一种基于受保护原子操作的生产质量编程语言，并解决三个研究问题：（1）如何正确处理原子操作中的异常，（2）如何通过动态混合支持代码重用，作为一种灵活且安全的方法组合机制，具有原子操作，以及（3）如何在这种语言中引入所有权以允许更好的静态检查，简化正确性条件并提高代码效率。