Specialization of CML message-passing primitives

Concurrent ML (CML) is a statically-typed higher-order concurrent language that is embedded in Standard ML. Its most notable feature is its support for first-class synchronous operations. This mechanism allows programmers to encapsulate complicated communication and synchronization protocols as first-class abstractions, which encourages a modular style of programming where the underlying channels used to communicate with a given thread en behind data and type abstraction. While CML has been in active use for well over a decade, little attention has been paid to optimizing CML programs. In this paper, we present a new program analysis for statically-typed higher-order concurrent languages that enables the compile-time specialization of communication operations. This specialization is particularly important in a multiprocessor or multicore setting, where the synchronization overhead for general-purpose operations are high. Preliminary results from a prototype that we have built demonstr...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: POPL
• Authors: John H. Reppy, Yingqi Xiao
• Keywords: Extended Control-flow Graph, Mechanism Allows Programmers, Modular Style, POPL 2007, Programming Languages