Demystifying Magic: High-level Low-level Programming

Demystifying Magic: High-level Low-level Programming (2009)

Cached

Download Links

by Daniel Frampton , Stephen M. Blackburn , Perry Cheng , Robin J. Garner , David Grove , J. Eliot B. Moss , Sergey I. Salishev

Venue:	PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2009 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON VIRTUAL EXECUTION ENVIRONMENTS
Citations:	5 - 2 self

Versions

Version History

Metadata Version 2

User correction supplied by minglai

Datum	Value	Source
TITLE	Demystifying Magic: High-level Low-level Programming	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Daniel Frampton	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	Australian National University	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Stephen M. Blackburn	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	Australian National University	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Perry Cheng	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	IBM Research	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Robin J. Garner	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	Australian National University	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	David Grove	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	IBM Research	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	J. Eliot B. Moss	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	University of Massachusetts at Amherst	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Sergey I. Salishev	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	St. Petersburg State University, Russia	user correction
ABSTRACT	The power of high-level languages lies in their abstraction over hardware and software complexity, leading to greater security, better reliability, and lower development costs. However, opaque abstractions are often show-stoppers for systems programmers, forcing them to either break the abstraction, or more often, simply give up and use a different language. This paper addresses the challenge of opening up a high-level language to allow practical low-level programming without forsaking integrity or performance. The contribution of this paper is three-fold: 1) we draw together common threads in a diverse literature, 2) we identify a framework for extending high-level languages for low-level programming, and 3) we show the power of this approach through concrete case studies. Our framework leverages just three core ideas: extending semantics via intrinsic methods, extending types via unboxing and architectural-width primitives, and controlling semantics via scoped semantic regimes. We develop these ideas through the context of a rich literature and substantial practical experience. We show that they provide the power necessary to implement substantial artifacts such as a high-performance virtual machine, while preserving the software engineering benefits of the host language. The time has come for high-level low-level programming to be taken more seriously: 1) more projects now use high-level languages for systems programming, 2) increasing architectural heterogeneity and parallelism heighten the need for abstraction, and 3) a new generation of high-level languages are under development and ripe to be influenced.	user correction
YEAR	2009	user correction
VENUE	PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2009 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON VIRTUAL EXECUTION ENVIRONMENTS	user correction
VENUE TYPE	CONFERENCE	user correction
PAGES	81--90	user correction
CITATIONS	69 found	ParsCit 1.0