Doctoral thesis: Performance Portable Scientific Computing through Multi-Level Compiler Optimizations
In-Person: Room 34-401A (Grier Room A); hybrid with Zoom
Location: Room 34-401A (Grier Room A)
Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93930155446?pwd=deWNA2lxU0KrlsNsIqc9g44TxtJtDM.1
Presenter: Avik Pal
Thesis Title: Performance Portable Scientific Computing through Multi-Level Compiler Optimizations
Thesis Abstract: Scientific computing faces a trade-off between mathematical expressiveness and performance across heterogeneous hardware. This work presents a compiler-driven approach that automatically preserves and recovers mathematical structure in existing scientific codes to generate optimized code without manual re-engineering. By combining graph optimizations, abstraction raising, communication optimizations, multi-level automatic differentiation, and learned cost models within a unified compiler infrastructure, the system enables optimizations that are infeasible in isolation. Our evaluations on large-scale scientific applications, including differentiable climate and hypersonic flow simulations, demonstrate consistent performance gains across thousands of GPUs and TPUs. The methods and artifacts presented in this thesis demonstrate a path toward scientific computing where the complexity of heterogeneous execution is handled automatically, leaving scientists free to focus on the mathematics.
Committee Members: Dr. Alan Edelman, Dr. Gerald Sussman, Dr. Saman Amarasinghe, and Dr. Christopher Rackauckas.
Details
- Date: Friday, February 6
- Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
- Category: Thesis Defense
- Location: In-Person: Room 34-401A (Grier Room A); hybrid with Zoom