A Programming Model of Object Validity for Secure and Efficient Concurrency. To provide improved performance and security for software applications, Australia's ICT industry must adapt to the complex programming demands of modern multicore processors. The programming model developed in the project represents a breakthrough solution. A seamless integration of concurrency and object orientation leads to a simple yet powerful programming style that is compatible with today's premier approach to bui ....A Programming Model of Object Validity for Secure and Efficient Concurrency. To provide improved performance and security for software applications, Australia's ICT industry must adapt to the complex programming demands of modern multicore processors. The programming model developed in the project represents a breakthrough solution. A seamless integration of concurrency and object orientation leads to a simple yet powerful programming style that is compatible with today's premier approach to building large-scale software systems with significantly improved performance and security. The product will reduce development time for compute-intensive applications in many industry sectors, including health care (e.g. patient monitoring), finance, defence, environment, mining, manufacturing and computer games.Read moreRead less
Analysis and Optimisation of Incomplete Object-Oriented Programs. This project will push Australia to the forefront of OO technologies and will increase the profile of advanced programming language design and implementation research in Australia. The completed framework will
likely be commercially viable as Australia industries such as banks and
insurance companies and government organisations hosting large
OO software systems may benefit (in terms of performance and
code security) from the ....Analysis and Optimisation of Incomplete Object-Oriented Programs. This project will push Australia to the forefront of OO technologies and will increase the profile of advanced programming language design and implementation research in Australia. The completed framework will
likely be commercially viable as Australia industries such as banks and
insurance companies and government organisations hosting large
OO software systems may benefit (in terms of performance and
code security) from the technology developed as a result of this research. The completed framework will also provide an excellent platform for researchers in Australia and elsewhere to do research in OO technologies, helping in producing quality students for the Australian IT industry.Read moreRead less
Scratchpad-based Memory Allocation Techniques for Embedded Software. This research aims at developing automatic memory allocation algorithms to maximise the effective utilisation of scratchpad memories, which will lead to significantly improved performance and energy usage in embedded applications. The outcomes of this project will provide generic solutions to many Australia-based industries, including telecommunication, network management, sensor networks, automotive and instrumentation/measure ....Scratchpad-based Memory Allocation Techniques for Embedded Software. This research aims at developing automatic memory allocation algorithms to maximise the effective utilisation of scratchpad memories, which will lead to significantly improved performance and energy usage in embedded applications. The outcomes of this project will provide generic solutions to many Australia-based industries, including telecommunication, network management, sensor networks, automotive and instrumentation/measurement, where embedded systems are ubiquitously used. Therefore, this project will significantly contribute to the Priority Area (Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries), hence fits into its Priority Goal: Frontier Technologies.Read moreRead less
Compiler-Directed Code Tiling for Higher Program Performance and Predictability on Multi-Level Memory Hierarchies. Programming languages invariably induce a perception of memory as being flat, whereas actual computers are being equipped increasingly with deep memory hierarchies to overcome the ever-widening performance gap between processors and memories. This mismatch can result in low locality of reference and poor performance. This project will develop a new array layout transformation, calle ....Compiler-Directed Code Tiling for Higher Program Performance and Predictability on Multi-Level Memory Hierarchies. Programming languages invariably induce a perception of memory as being flat, whereas actual computers are being equipped increasingly with deep memory hierarchies to overcome the ever-widening performance gap between processors and memories. This mismatch can result in low locality of reference and poor performance. This project will develop a new array layout transformation, called data tiling, used in tandem with loop tiling to achieve significantly improved performance gains (and predictability) for array-dominated applications on multi-level memory hierarchies. We will explore this joint restructuring to obtain higher performance and predictability for whole programs, kernel libraries, iterative stencil codes and embedded applications.
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A safe and efficient multi-language component framework based on dynamic compilation. Components are a versatile mechanism for the construction of extendible systems and for improved code reusability. Emerging environments like Microsoft's .NET support the interaction of components written in different programming languages. To date, such systems do not adequately isolate components which therefore must trust each other. This is unacceptable for components loaded across the Internet. We will dev ....A safe and efficient multi-language component framework based on dynamic compilation. Components are a versatile mechanism for the construction of extendible systems and for improved code reusability. Emerging environments like Microsoft's .NET support the interaction of components written in different programming languages. To date, such systems do not adequately isolate components which therefore must trust each other. This is unacceptable for components loaded across the Internet. We will develop a framework for secure execution of component software, based on hardware-enforced protection domains. To minimize the resulting runtime overheads we will provide a component model with lightweight context switching. A novel typed intermediate language and dynamic compilation techniques will offer complementary optimisations.
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A Unified Grid Programming Methodology for Global e-Science. This project will contribute to the national benefit in three important ways. First, we will build a set of novel e-Science applications as demonstrator projects in areas of national priority. These will have enormous economic impact in areas ranging from environmental management to health. Second, we will build software infrastructure that will have both commercial and strategic value in its own right. Third, we shall build a critical ....A Unified Grid Programming Methodology for Global e-Science. This project will contribute to the national benefit in three important ways. First, we will build a set of novel e-Science applications as demonstrator projects in areas of national priority. These will have enormous economic impact in areas ranging from environmental management to health. Second, we will build software infrastructure that will have both commercial and strategic value in its own right. Third, we shall build a critical mass of expertise that bridges the physical sciences and computer science. The support provided to this proposal will allow multi-disciplinary teams to address scientific problems of significant scale.Read moreRead less
Towards High-performance and Fault-tolerant Distributed Java Implementations. Java Virtual Machines form an important part of the web and business
server market. Distributed Java Virtual Machines have the potential to
make a significant contribution to industries that utilize this
technology. An attractive platform for this purpose is the
cluster, a highly cost-effective and scalable parallel computer
model. However, realizing on such a platform a high performance virtual
machine implem ....Towards High-performance and Fault-tolerant Distributed Java Implementations. Java Virtual Machines form an important part of the web and business
server market. Distributed Java Virtual Machines have the potential to
make a significant contribution to industries that utilize this
technology. An attractive platform for this purpose is the
cluster, a highly cost-effective and scalable parallel computer
model. However, realizing on such a platform a high performance virtual
machine implementation tolerant to hardware and software faults, and
having efficient memory utilization, presents many challenging research
issues. This project will address these issues by extending a highly
efficient and extensible Java implementation to be aware of its cluster
environment.
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Reasoning about Rational Agents from a Programming Languages Perspective. Rational agents are complex system components inspired by models of rationality, in which beliefs, desires and intentions are represented explicitly. Intelligent agents are fast becoming mainstream and have wide-ranging industrial application. However, a serious obstacle to the deployment of rational agents is a lack of understanding of how to design and reason about agents to provide performance and correctness guarantees ....Reasoning about Rational Agents from a Programming Languages Perspective. Rational agents are complex system components inspired by models of rationality, in which beliefs, desires and intentions are represented explicitly. Intelligent agents are fast becoming mainstream and have wide-ranging industrial application. However, a serious obstacle to the deployment of rational agents is a lack of understanding of how to design and reason about agents to provide performance and correctness guarantees. This project will investigate extensions to intelligent agent architectures and develop tools for reasoning about complex systems built using those architectures. This will not only enable reliable prediction of performance, but contribute to a general methodology for intelligent agent design.
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Verified Emulation of Legacy Mission Computer Systems. Processor obsolescence is a serious maintenance problem for long-lived computer control systems in military aircraft and other critical applications. A promising solution is to interpose an emulator program between the original "legacy" software and a replacement processor. Unfortunately, no techniques exist for accurately verifying that this procedure preserves the original system's functional and timing behaviour. A particular challenge ....Verified Emulation of Legacy Mission Computer Systems. Processor obsolescence is a serious maintenance problem for long-lived computer control systems in military aircraft and other critical applications. A promising solution is to interpose an emulator program between the original "legacy" software and a replacement processor. Unfortunately, no techniques exist for accurately verifying that this procedure preserves the original system's functional and timing behaviour. A particular challenge is that processor emulations involve both legacy code and new subroutines, written in different programming languages. This project will enable verification of safety and mission-critical emulated systems by devising a multilingual modelling and reasoning formalism, based on program refinement theory.Read moreRead less
Adapting the Bulk Synchronous Parallel processing model to Peer-to-Peer Networked Computing. Advances in distributed computing have shown that data parallel and parametric applications domains are amenable to wide area distribution. The project will advance the Bulk Synchronous Parallel processing model to describe innovative applications from the loosely synchronous domain, e.g. fluid dynamics, strategy algorithms and N-body problems are challenges that have significant scientific and industria ....Adapting the Bulk Synchronous Parallel processing model to Peer-to-Peer Networked Computing. Advances in distributed computing have shown that data parallel and parametric applications domains are amenable to wide area distribution. The project will advance the Bulk Synchronous Parallel processing model to describe innovative applications from the loosely synchronous domain, e.g. fluid dynamics, strategy algorithms and N-body problems are challenges that have significant scientific and industrial value. The project specializes the exciting peer-to-peer paradigm, a frontier of inter-networking technology. By using the latest techniques and taking advantage of the technology implosion caused by low cost parallel infrastructure, the project outcomes will give Australia a strong position in the future of parallel technology.Read moreRead less