Prof Annie Liu presents "From Clarity to Efficiency for Distributed Algorithms"

This talk describes a very high-level language for clear description of distributed algorithms and optimizations necessary for generating efficient implementations.  The language supports high-level control flows where complex synchronization conditions can be expressed using high-level queries, especially logic quantifications, over message history sequences. Unfortunately, the programs would be extremely inefficient, including consuming unbounded memory, if executed straightforwardly.

Liu will present new optimizations that automatically transform complex synchronization conditions into incremental updates of necessary auxiliary values as messages are sent and received.  The core of the optimizations is the first general method for efficient implementation of logic quantifications.  We have developed an operational semantics of the language, implemented a prototype of the compiler and the optimizations, and successfully used the language and implementation for a variety of important distributed algorithms and dozens of distributed systems course projects.

Joint work with Scott D. Stoller, Bo Lin, and Jon Brandvein. For more information see http://distalgo.cs.stonybrook.edu/

Annie Liu is Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University.  She received her BS from Peking University, MEng from Tsinghua University, and PhD from Cornell University, all in Computer Science.  Her primary research is in languages and algorithms, especially on systematic design and optimization, centered around incrementalization---the discrete counterpart of differentiation in calculus.  Her current research focus is on languages and efficient implementations for secure distributed programming and for
declarative system specifications.  She has published in many prestigious venues, taught in a wide range of Computer Science areas, and presented over 100 conference and invited talks worldwide.  She serves on the ACM Books Editorial Board as the Area Editor for Programming Languages, and she is a member of IFIP WG 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi.

Students enrolled in CSE 600 will receive credit for attending this talk.