Date: Wed 27 Mar
Time: 15.00
Place: room 214

Speaker: Lars Birkedal (CMU)
Title: The Cogen Approach to Partial Evaluation
Reference: Eugenio Moggi

Abstract. A large class of similar computational problems can be solved in essentially two different ways: either by a specific program for each problem or by a general, parameterized program solving all the problems. A specific program is almost always more efficient than the general program, but the general program tends to be easier to write, maintain, and, of course, given a new problem one does not have to write a new specific program but instead one can employ the general program. Partial evaluation is a technique to automatically turn a general parameterized program into an efficient specialized program, applicable to one given problem. The idea is to obtain the best of two worlds, efficiency and generality. In this talk I will give an overview of what partial evaluation is, and describe a relatively new approach to partial evaluation, called the cogen approach [1]. Moreover, I'll give a brief overview of SML-Mix, a partial evaluator for Standard ML, developed jointly with Morten Welinder at DIKU, University of Copenhagen [2], and present a couple of experimental results.

[1] Lars Birkedal and Morten Welinder: Handwriting Program Generator Generators. PLILP-94. LNCS 844.
[2] Lars Birkedal and Morten Welinder: Partial Evaluation of Standard ML. DIKU Technical Report 93/22. Master's Thesis.