ANTAREX: A DSL-Based Approach to Adaptively Optimizing and Enforcing Extra-Functional Properties in High Performance Computing

Abstract

The ANTAREX project relies on a Domain Specific Language (DSL) based on Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) concepts to allow applications to enforce extra functional properties such as energy-efficiency and performance and to optimize Quality of Service (QoS) in an adaptive way. The DSL approach allows the definition of energy-efficiency, performance, and adaptivity strategies as well as their enforcement at runtime through application autotuning and resource and power management. In this paper, we present an overview of the ANTAREX DSL and some ofits capabilities through a number of examples, including how the DSL is applied in the context of one of the project use cases.

Exascale Computing Deployment Challenges

“…Research will identify the required features to improve the performance and interoperability between the current programming models, and how to provide the tool(s) below the Programming Model and interfaces that exploit the best practices in terms of scalability and performance. Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) as higher level abstractions can be used to increase programmer efficiency, hide the hardware complexity and allow hardware independence [8], but must be designed first. Generic computing patterns that allow the implementation of customised algorithms to optimise load balancing, data handling, and support fault tolerance can also ease application development [5].…”

Autotuning and adaptivity in energy efficient HPC systems

“…One of the main challenges of ANTAREX is to develop a DSL able to integrate several technologies developed during the project [15]. Given that the use cases and the technologies are implemented in C/C++, we took a two-pronged approach regarding the DSL: 1) create a DSL that could transform and adapt C/C++ source-code, and 2) develop DSL API libraries, one for each technology.…”

The ANTAREX domain specific language for high performance computing

“…While many approaches to programming languages and models for HPC attempt to simplify the development process by reducing or removing the need for the HPC expert, the recently completed ANTAREX project [2,3] fully embraces this split development process, and aims at supporting it. To this end, we introduce the ANTAREX DSL, a Domain Specific Language (DSL) to express the application self-adaptivity and to runtime manage and autotune applications for green heterogeneous HPC systems up to the Exascale level.…”