UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM


presents


"Generic Array Programming: From Design Principles 
 to Implementation Techniques" 

speaker:

Dr. Sven-Bodo Scholz 
Inst. of Computer Science, 
University of Kiel, Germany

8  October 2003 (Wednesday)

Lecture Theatre E350
Hatfield Campus
3 - 4 pm


Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.

Everyone is Welcome to Attend


Abstract:

Generic programming is about generalizing software components for extending the
range of its applicability. The increased potential for software reuse gained
by this process improves program maintenance and program validation.  Several
programming paradigms have come up with extensions to that effect.  Object
oriented languages such as C++ or Java provide templates or generic types that
allow to parameterize classes by other classes/types.  Functional languages
support the definition of functions over the algebraic structure of types
rather than types themselves.

In this talk we discuss generic programming in the context of specifying
operations on arrays. Starting out from conventional programming features with
arrays, we develop several design principles for array programming languages.
At the example of SaC (for Single Assignment C), a functional C variant aimed
at numerical applications, we show how the design principles can lead to a
language design and what kind of challenges wrt. compiler technology arise from
them. Finally, we give a flavor of some of the compiler technology that was
developed for compiling SaC programs into code that is competitive with that of
low-level Fortran programs.


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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium Schedule & Abstracts: 
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq/