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Session Types: Towards safe and fast reconfigurable programming

Nicholas NG, Nobuko YOSHIDA, Xinyu NIU, Kuen HUNGTSOI, Wayne LUK

This paper introduces a new programming framework based on the theory of session types for safe, reconfigurable parallel designs.

We apply the session type theory to C and Java programming languages and demonstrate that the session-based languages can offer a clear and tractable framework to describe communications between parallel components and guarantee communication-safety and deadlock-freedom by compile-time type checking.

Many representative communication topologies such as a ring or scatter-gather can be programmed and verified in session-based programming languages. Case studies involving N-body simulation and K-means clustering are used to illustrate the session-based programming style and to demonstrate that the session-based languages perform competitively against MPI counterparts in an FPGA-based heterogeneous cluster, as well as the potential of integrating them with FPGA acceleration.

@article{NYNTL2012,
  author = {Nicholas Ng and Nobuko Yoshida and Xinyu Niu and Kuen Hung Tsoi and Wayne Luk},
  title = {{Session Types: Towards safe and fast reconfigurable programming}},
  journal = {SIGARCH CAN},
  volume = {40},
  issue = {5},
  pages = {22--27},
  publisher = {ACM},
  year = 2012
}

@article{NYNTL2012,
  author = {Nicholas Ng and Nobuko Yoshida and Xinyu Niu and Kuen Hung Tsoi and Wayne Luk},
  title = {{Session Types: Towards safe and fast reconfigurable programming}},
  journal = {ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News},
  volume = {40},
  issue = {5},
  pages = {22--27},
  publisher = {ACM},
  doi = "10.1145/2460216.2460221",
  year = 2012
}