Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Computer programming languages and runtime systems are the foundational mechanism for writing sequential and concurrent programs, transforming human ideas into a practical, functioning form executable by a computer. All research and industrial software are built from programming languages, and programming is trending towards multiple processors (cores) organized as shared memory or distributed across multiple computers. Making programming languages and runtime systems more expressive, easier to use, safer, and performant cuts across all computing disciplines. The applicants (Buhr, Dietl, Karsten, Lam, Lhotak, Richards, and Zhang) build or adapt these foundational tools, enhancing the infrastructure for all of computer science, from teaching programming to developing advanced software projects. The acquisition of new experimental multi-core computers (servers) and testing hardware (switch and clients) is critical for supporting programming-language faculty and graduate students at the University of Waterloo. The equipment is essential to provide a reliable programming and experimental environment to move the applicants' research to the next level with respect to sequential and parallel computation, performance testing, and data analysis. Without access to the next generation of parallel processors, the applicants are unable to produce research results that matter in practice or are considered relevant in academia. The equipment will be used in multiple programming-language projects developing and evaluating advanced algorithms, software techniques, and testing procedures (language design, type systems, concurrency) and runtime systems (user-level threading, locking, scheduling). The research plan takes a holistic approach, performing research vertically across the entire language-development environment, i.e., design, compilation, tools, and high-performance execution especially on parallel computers. The research results are directly applicable to existing and new programming languages, and associated high performance runtime-systems. Graduates from our group are proficient at developing and working on sophisticated and complex system-level software, and are highly sought after at advanced levels in the IT industry. The potential users of this research work and its associated software are multiple sectors of the Canadian IT industry, ranging from small-scale and entrepreneurial software companies to equipment vendors and telecommunication providers. These software companies will be able to rapidly produce complex, concurrent applications, which effectively exploit multiprocessor technology available today and tomorrow. In turn, this creates an economic advantage for these companies by lowering development costs and time to market. As well, the research software is open-source so Canadian companies and consumers are not tied to proprietary and expensive systems and applications, which results in cost savings for businesses and consumers.