software portability

A compiler is frequently unable to make use of algorithm-specific instructions which DSP's (digital signal processors) provide. To force their use, programmers use language extensions to define intrinsic functions. Traditionally, these intrinsic functions are implemented with assembly language instructions on the target processor. We propose and implement a new approach to intrinsic functions where the programmer targets a compiler's intermediate representation rather than the assembly language of a particular processor. The benefits of our approach are both portability and improved performance. We compare the performance of the traditional approach with our new approach for four GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) speech coders. We also examine the interaction of our new approach with two major optimizations: profile-directed function inlining and aggressive loop optimization. We find that, compared to the traditional approach, ours benefits greatly from removing barriers to these optimizations. We find that without inlining or loop optimization, our new approach speeds up execution by a factor of 1.12 compared to the traditional approach; however, with both loop optimization and a moderate amount of inlining, we find a speedup of 2.88. We find a similar improvement in achieved instruction level parallelism.

This paper presents the design and preliminary implementation of MpPVM, a software system that supports process migration for PVM application programs in a non-dedicated heterogeneous computing environment. New concepts of migration point as well as migration point analysis and necessary data analysis are introduced. A preliminary implementation of MpPVM and its experimental results are also presented, showing the correctness and promising performance of our process migration mechanism in the scalable non-dedicated heterogeneous computing environment

This paper describes real-time extensions to the Open Object-Oriented Database system using the RTSORAC data model. This model combines an objectoriented data model, real-time requirements, flexible transactions, semantic relationships among objects, and active database features. Several extensions to the Open Object-Oriented Database system, including development of interfaces for real-time objects and realtime transactions, use of a real-time operating system, incorporation of real-time object management, and incorporation of real-time transaction management, are also described.

... The simulation tools presented in this paper uses the pro-cess-orientqd approach being the activity of the processes defined by the programmer. ... This is important for the simulation of MIMD architectures where pro-cesses execute different tasks simultaneously. ...

Estimation of dynamic behaviors in power systems is a key feature for low-frequency oscillations characterization in wide-area monitoring and control systems (WAMS, WACS). This paper presents the development of an eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA)/Prony portable software tool and its use to perform robust modal analysis in a single-input-single-output (SISO) measurement-based context. The algorithm is developed using C language and open source libraries to minimize portability issues. The performance of the proposed algorithm on discrete-time signals is evaluated through field measurement data analysis, and then by a comparison with rotational invariance (ESPRIT) techniques.

This paper describes a distributed implementation of a scalable heterogeneous associative logic programming model, and describes an abstract instruction set for the distributed version of the model. Associative computation exploits data parallel computation. The implementation uses PVM for architecture independence, and uses object oriented programming for modularity and portability. Performance results on a cluster of IBM RS 6000 are presented.

The rapid growth of the smartphone market and its increasing revenue has motivated developers to target multiple platforms. Market leaders, such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft, develop their smart-phone applications complying with their platform specifications. The specification of each platform makes a platform-dedicated application incompatible with other platforms due to the diversity of operating systems , programming languages, and design patterns. Conventional development methodologies are applied to smartphone applications, yet they perform less well. Smartphone applications have unique hardware and software requirements. All previous factors push smartphone developers to build less sophisticated and low-quality products when targeting multiple smartphone platforms. Model-driven development have been considered to generate smartphone applications from abstract models to alleviate smartphones platform fragmentation. Reusing these abstract models for other platforms was not considered because they do not fit new platforms requirements. It is possible that defining smartphone applications using a portability-driven modeling notation would facilitate smartphone developers to understand better their applications to be ported to other platforms. We call for a portability-driven modeling notation to be used within a smartphone development process. Our in-process research work will be manifested through the application of a domain-specific language complying with the three software portability principles and three design factors. This paper aims to highlight our research work, methodology and current statue.

... in a modular way by means of Schema Defmin'on Sen (SDS) (represented as ... Ian Campbell (project manager), John Carunell, Claudio Costa, Ferdi-nand0 Gallo, Jean ... References CAMP88 CampbellI., "Emmude Portable Common Tool Environment", Information and Software ...

Service-Oriented Computing holds great promises to realize the vision of on-demand services available anytime and anywhere. It is still not clear, however, when and how the existing systems will benefit from this new wave. The problem is particularly acute for the software embedded in myriad devices. This work charts a roadmap for migration of legacy software to pervasive service-oriented computing. A key idea is to achieve integration even at the presentation layer, not only at backend layers like application or data. This requires re-inventing the popular mashup technology for the enterprise level. Domain-Specific-Kits, which has been originally introduced within the context of software factory automation, has been reshaped as another enabling technology towards migrating to the service harmonization platform. 1.

Special purpose instruction set processors (lSPS) challenge compilers because of instruction level par-allelism, small numbers of registers, and highly spe-cialized register capabilities. Many traditionally sepa-rate subproblems in code generation have been unified and jointly optimized within a single integer linear pro-gramming (ILP) model. ILP modeling provides a pow-erful methodology for for generating high-quality code for a variety of ISPS. 1

The increased complexity of programming heterogeneous reconfigurable platforms requires a thorough understanding of application behavior, for which developers need sophisticated analysis tools. One particular problem, which severely limits the performance gain of running applications on these platforms, is the inappropriateness of the kernels mapped onto the reconfigurable fabrics. Efficient porting of legacy applications to these emerging heterogeneous platforms demands code tuning considering several critical points, such as, proper kernel size and small memory communication overhead. Detailed profiling information is thus vital for an efficient HW/SW co-design. To facilitate addressing these issues, we developed the Q2 profiling framework. It consists of two parts: an advanced memory access profiling toolset that provides detailed information on the run-time memory access patterns of an application and a statistical modeling framework that makes predictions for resources, early in the design phase, based on software metrics. The code optimizations triggered by careful analysis of the profiling information is used to tailor existing applications for heterogeneous reconfigurable platforms. In this paper, we examine a real application in detail to show the potential of the proposed profiling framework. Experimental results show that a speedup of 1.3× is achieved by accelerating a merged kernel of four critical functions in the application.

One of the most attractive aspects of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) lies in its open standard nature. Code that is based only on constructs described in the CORBA specification is portable between object request brokers (ORBs) without depending on any single ORB implementation. However, this portability feature is not completely achieved in real-world applications. This paper discusses CORBA portability issues through our experience in implementing a CORBA object group service (OGS) and porting it on different ORBs. In particular, we discuss some implementation choices we made with Orbix and VisiBroker, and we point out the impact of these choices on the service portability and interoperability. This sheds some light on whether the current CORBA specification is mature enough to be deployed in industrial systems that have requirements regarding portability and interoperability. We also present how new CORBA specifications solve part of the shortcomings mentioned in this paper