Parallel Haskell Hackathon

Organisation

Dates : 10-12 December

Location : St Andrews

Participants

Vladimir Janjic (Host), Hans-Wolfgang Loidl, Kevin Hammond, Mustafa Aswad, Henrique Ferreiro, Philip W Trinder, Patrick Maier, Abyd Al Zain, Mischa Dieterle, Thomas Horstmeyer, Jost Berthold, Simon Marlow (virtual),

Source code

Important: if you can, please prepare a setup of the latest sources in advance. A darcs repository has been set up on the server in Marburg, please read here how to get a working setup:  Repository Briefing.

You should contact Mischa (dieterle@mathematik...) in order to get access, or check out read-only via http (which is of course not what we want later). If you have questions or problems, edit the page or mail Jost (berthold@mathematik...)

Agenda

An Agenda Proposal is now on a separate page.

Topics to cover in the Hackathon:

• Short overview sessions on implementation internals (KH: these should not all be on the first afternoon!):
  • GUM (Mustafa)
  • Eden (Jost)
  • Globus (Abyd)
  • Migration/Load Balancing (Vladimir)
  • ghc HEAD developments (Simon)
  • GUM/Eden Compilation and Debugging (Vladimir?)
• GUM-6 port
• Merging GUM and Eden implementations
  • Packing code
  • Scheduler
  • GC interface
  • Tagging
• Usage of new tracing infrastructure
• Development infrastructure
  • Unified revision control (darcs)
  • Debugging infrastructure
  • Packaging
  • Setup for automatic tests
• Parallel nofib-suite
• Planned extensions and applications
  • Integration with GHC/SMP
  • Integrating migration
  • Globus interface
  • pre-SCSCP GAP interface
  • Micro-kernel/substrate approach to the RTS
• Nominating people in charge of sub-projects
  • parallel nofib suite
  • Eden/GUM code maintenance
  • testing framework
• Prize for the most awkward bug fixed in the Hackaton. _{Jost: I am non-competitive in this contest, since my task is to introduce them ;) HWL: Clearly you are at an disadvantage: you first have to introduce the bug; we don't have that problem;-)}

Expected Outcomes

Concrete Deliverables

• Tracing mechanism
• Unified repository, containing Eden and GUM code
• Common test platform
• List of people in charge of sub-projects
• Longer Term: Eden&GUM in GHC HEAD

Sub-tasks in Eden/GUM/GHC integration:

• Merge Eden/GUM repository
• Merge GUM into current Eden version
• Adapt for per-CPU/Core GC
• Integrating Vladimirs work (load balancing, migration)

Longer term system issues

• Manycore
• Hierarchies
• HPC
• Grid
• Cloud
• GPGPUs
• Artcop

Others

• Update plan btw Eden/GUM and GHC-HEAD
• Community creation
• PhD Topic for Henrique
• Benchmarks/Parallel NoFib? suite
• Launch GpH book
• Long Term: Build Franchise
• Agree on new Strategies module (rewrite applications)
• Visualisation tools (which?)
• Revisit design decisions for Eden/GUM

Decisions

We prioritised setting up a common repository and Eden/GUM integration. Benchmarking and packaging were seen as longer term issues.

We agreed to use the GHC ticketing system, with some specific identification for Eden/GUM issues. We agreed to use a common darcs repository for Eden/GUM.

Community Building

We need to find common ways of working to maximise our effort.

darcs for repositories

skype for commication

do we want dedicated mailing lists/IRC channels?

Who Does What

We agreed to setup teams to work on different issues as follows

Repository: VJ + JB

Benchmarking: HF + MD + JB + everyone (discussion on Friday)

Visualisation Tools: HF + JB + KH + MKA + PWT

GHC/Eden Integration

Integrating basic GUM code into Eden version 6.13: HWL?

Packing code (incl. tags): HWL+ MKA + JB

Scheduler: HWL + HF + PM + PWT

GC Interface + Global Addresses (with tags): HWL + VJ

Do we retain FETCHME closures or e.g. use a table

Tracing (agree format): KH + JB + MD + TH + HWL

We need to agree a format!

Thread Migration (packing TSOs, dealing with black holes, plus shark etc mechanisms): PWT + VJ