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DIKU International Summer School '98


Dear Colleague,

Please bring the following announcement to the attention of anyone in your
group who might be interested.

Best wishes,
Jesper Joergensen



                 DIKU International Summer School '98

                Partial Evaluation: Practice and Theory

                     from June 29 - July 10, 1998


The DIKU International Summer Schools is a series of summer schools at
DIKU, the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen,
Denmark. The summer schools are aimed at Ph.D.-students and researchers
from research environments that are leading within the area in
question. Having run for a number of years, the series assumed its present
form in 1997 with successful DIKU International Summer Schools on adaptive
robot behaviour, region-based memory management, and mathematical logic.


Description:
===========

Program specialization, also known as partial evaluation, is an automatic
tool for program optimization, similar in concept to but in several ways
stronger than a highly optimizing compiler. It is a source-to-source
staging transformation: a program p together with partial data s are
transformed into an often faster specialized version p-s by precomputing
parts of p that depend only on s. The possibility, in principle, of partial
evaluation is contained in Kleene's classical s-m-n theorem.

Specialization is worthwhile when p runs for a long time, and p-s is
significantly faster than p. Suitable problem types include: Highly
parameterised computations that use much time consulting parameters, but
are often run using the same parameter settings; programs with many similar
subcomputations; programs of a highly interpretive nature, e.g. circuit and
other simulators, where specialization removes the time to scan the object
being simulated; database query search algorithms; and meta-programming,
where a problem is solved by designing a user-oriented language and an
interpreter for it.

Partial evaluators have been successfully applied to generate efficient
specialized programs for ray tracing, for the Fast Fourier transform, and
for circuit and planetary simulations. Partial evaluators have also been
used to compile using interpreters for programming languages and to
generate compilers from interpreters.

The DIKU International Summer School '98 on Partial Evaluation offers a
practical introduction to several existing partial evaluators, including
the opportunity for guided hands-on experience, as well as the presentation
of some more sophisticated theory, systems, and applications. Lectures will
be given by some of the leading researchers in the field.

The summer school runs for two weeks. The first week is practically
oriented, focusing on a number of partial evaluation systems, mainly
developed at DIKU. The second week combines practical experience with more
sophisticated theory, systems, and applications. It is possible to follow
each of the two weeks on its own.

Organizing Committee
====================

Neil D. Jones 
Jesper Joergensen 
Jens Peter Secher 
Morten Heine B. Soerensen (chair, e-mail rambo@diku.dk)


Lectures and topics:
===================

Torben Mogensen:	Introduction, overview, applications

John Hatcliff:		Foundations of partial evaluation and program 
			specialization

Jens Peter Secher:	C-mix 

Jesper Joergensen:	Similix

Torben Mogensen:	Inherited limits

Lennart Augustsson:	Partial evaluation for aircraft crew scheduling

Neil Jones:		Lambda-mix

Satnam Singh:		Hardware specialization

Jesper Joergensen and	Multi-level specialization
Robert Gluck:

Morten Heine Soerensen: Supercompilation

John Hughes:		Type specialization

Michael Leuschel:	Logic program specialization

Michael Leuschel:	Advanced logic program specialization

Julia Lawall:		FFT, specialization of an implementation of 
			the Fast Fourier Transform

Jens Palsberg:		Eta-redexes

Olivier Danvy:		Type-directed partial evaluation

Peter Thiemann:		Aspects of the PGG system 



Deadline for registration: 
==========================

                              May 29, 1998.
                              ============

URL of Summer School:
====================

   http://www.diku.dk/research-groups/topps/activities/pe-sommerschool-98/