StreamIt and Multicore Programming

Say you're a university student (which many of you are) and say you've decided to sign up for a research program (hey, it looks good on your resume). Would you be more likely to opt for something along the lines of "Programming the PlayStation 3 Cell Processor" or "Compiler for Multicore Architectures"? Decisions, decisions, decisions. Sigh.

In truth, it probably doesn't matter which one you sign up for because I'd bet there's a lot of overlap between these two projects, at least at MIT. Both offered through the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Both focus on software development for multicore processors (something every programmer ought to be up to speed on these days) and both focus on the Cell processor.

Additionally, both research projects are also based on StreamIt, a programming language and compilation infrastructure specifically engineered for streaming systems like those found in multicore environments. StreamIt is designed to facilitate the programming of large streaming applications, as well as their efficient and effective mapping to a wide variety of target architectures multicore architectures and clusters. (Also see Algorithmic Trading and Stream Processing.)

Currently in version 2.1.1, the StreamIt compiler is freely available (including benchmarks). You can also register to download the full source package which includes all of the StreamIt sources, or the full binary package which does not contain any sources, but includes a Java jar file of the full compiler. Also available is an Eclipse Plugin .

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:38 AM  Permalink