SafeGPU: Contract- and library-based GPGPU for object-oriented languages

• Main Authors: KOLESNICHENKO, Alexey, POSKITT, Christopher M., NANZ, Sebastian
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
• Subjects: GPGPU; parallel computing; runtime code generation; generative programming; object-orientation; managed languages; design-by-contract; program correctness; Programming Languages and Compilers; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4858; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5861/viewcontent/Kolesnichenko_Poskitt_Nanz.COMLAN.2016.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Using GPUs as general-purpose processors has revolutionized parallel computing by providing, for a large and growing set of algorithms, massive data-parallelization on desktop machines. An obstacle to their widespread adoption, however, is the difficulty of programming them and the low-level control of the hardware required to achieve good performance. This paper proposes a programming approach, SafeGPU, that aims to make GPU data-parallel operations accessible through high-level libraries for object-oriented languages, while maintaining the performance benefits of lower-level code. The approach provides data-parallel operations for collections that can be chained and combined to express compound computations, with data synchronization and device management all handled automatically. It also integrates the design-by-contract methodology, which increases confidence in functional program correctness by embedding executable specifications into the program text. We present a prototype of SafeGPU for Eiffel, and show that it leads to modular and concise code that is accessible for GPGPU non-experts, while still providing performance comparable with that of hand-written CUDA code. We also describe our first steps towards porting it to C#, highlighting some challenges, solutions, and insights for implementing the approach in different managed languages. Finally, we show that runtime contract-checking becomes feasible in SafeGPU, as the contracts can be executed on the GPU.