My presentation from SIAM PP12

Here is the presentation I gave at SIAM PP12 in February: https://client.blueskybroadcast.com/SIAM12/PP/SIAM_PP12_MS6-4/, “Inside a GPGPU Managed Platform with an Auto-tuning JIT Compiler”. This page needs the Adobe Flash Player.

Here’s a direct link to the PDF slide deck: https://client.blueskybroadcast.com/SIAM12/PP/PDF/Jang_MS6-4_2-15-12_11-30am.pdf .

After my talk, someone asked if I was writing a paper about this stuff. I had to answer no – I don’t have enough resources to write a paper and build the technology. My first priority is building.

However… I am really confused as to what I am building. Seriously, I don’t know. Technology is stuff that affects culture. It’s not only engineering.

What is the relevance of this?

Let’s assume that everything works perfectly (it doesn’t but this is a thought experiment). Then how is it useful to people? How does it change anything they do? I do not have an answer to this.

The closest analogue to this work may be something like Ocaml. It’s a practical language for rapid prototyping of quantitative data munging applications (just my point of view). It is still quite obscure: too practical to be interesting in academic research; too different to be mainstream for software engineers.

Part of relevance is more than engineering. Of that, I am certain.

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