A Code Generation Framework for Actor-Oriented Models with Partial Evaluation

Abstract

Embedded software requires concurrency formalisms other than threads and mutexes used in traditional programming languages like C. Actor-oriented design presents a high level abstraction for composing concurrent components. However, high level abstraction often introduces overhead and results in slower system. We address the problem of generating efficient implementation for the systems with such a high level description. We use partial evaluation as an optimized compilation technique for actor-oriented models. We use a helper-based mechanism, which results in flexible and extensible code generation framework. The end result is that the benefit offered by high level abstraction comes with (almost) no performance penalty. The code generation framework has been released in open source form as part of Ptolemy II 6.0.1.

Component-based design for the future

“…The key challenge is that such synthesis must preserve the semantics of the implementation. We have many years of experience with semantics-preserving code generation [51], [61], [58] and model transformation [17].…”

Heterogeneous composition of models of computation

“…In SDF, deadlock and boundedness of communication buffers are decidable. As a consequence, SDF is well suited to code generation (the synthesis of a stand-alone program that executes independently of the workflow framework) [15]. With DDF, actors need not have a fixed token production or consumption rate, the schedule is determined at runtime.…”

Real-time C Code Generation in Ptolemy II for the Giotto Model of Computation

“…Each actor has a language-specific (C,VHDL,etc.) adapter file, while each target has its own target-specific adapter file [9].…”

“…This work creates a Giotto adapter for the Ptolemy II C code generation framework [9]. A picture of the framework applicable to this work is shown in Figure 5.…”