2026-09-19T20:43:13Zhttps://dspace.mit.edu/server/oai/requestoai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/343612022-01-13T07:54:29Zcom_1721.1_7582com_1721.1_7581col_1721.1_131023
Charles E. Leiserson.
Lee, I-Ting Angelina
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
2006-11-07T11:48:00Z
2006-11-07T11:48:00Z
2005
2005
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34361
70078935
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-107).
JCilk is a Java-based multithreaded programming language which extends Java to provide a dynamic threading model. Specifically, JCilk imports Cilk's fork-join primitives spawn and sync into Java to provide procedure-call semantics for concurrent subcomputations. More importantly, JCilk integrates exception handling with multi-threading by defining semantics consistent with Java's existing semantics of exception handling. JCilk's strategy of integrating multithreading with Java's exception semantics yields some surprising semantic synergies. In particular, JCilk extends Java's exception semantics to allow exceptions to be passed from a spawned method to its parent in a natural way that obviates the need for Cilk's inlet and abort constructs. This extension is "faithful" in that it obeys Java's ordinary serial semantics when executed on a single processor. When executed in parallel, however, an exception thrown by a JCilk computation signals its sibling computations to abort, yielding a clean semantics in which only a single exception from the enclosing try block is handled. To minimize the complexity of reasoning about aborts, JCilk signals them "semisynchronously" so that abort signals do not interrupt ordinary serial code. Because JCilk uses Java's normal exception mechanism to propagate an abort throughout a subcomputation, the programmer can handle clean-up by simply catching a thrown CilkAbort exception. This thesis documents in detail the designed semantics, the linguistic decisions we made, and their justifications. This thesis also describes the structure of JCilk compiler and how it supports the exception semantics.
(cont.) Specifically, the JCilk compiler performs a two-stage compilation process to support the continuation mechanism required by the runtime system's work-stealing algorithm. By performing static analysis, the compiler generates code to support the "catchlet" and "finallet" mechanisms for handling exceptions. The design of JCilk represents joint research with John S. Danaher and Charles E. Leiserson.
by I-Ting Angelina Lee.
S.M.
107 p.
5852332 bytes
5858355 bytes
application/pdf
application/pdf
eng
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
The JCilk multithreaded language
Thesis
application/pdf
Publication
unknown
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<Abstract>JCilk is a Java-based multithreaded programming language which extends Java to provide a dynamic threading model. Specifically, JCilk imports Cilk's fork-join primitives spawn and sync into Java to provide procedure-call semantics for concurrent subcomputations. More importantly, JCilk integrates exception handling with multi-threading by defining semantics consistent with Java's existing semantics of exception handling. JCilk's strategy of integrating multithreading with Java's exception semantics yields some surprising semantic synergies. In particular, JCilk extends Java's exception semantics to allow exceptions to be passed from a spawned method to its parent in a natural way that obviates the need for Cilk's inlet and abort constructs. This extension is "faithful" in that it obeys Java's ordinary serial semantics when executed on a single processor. When executed in parallel, however, an exception thrown by a JCilk computation signals its sibling computations to abort, yielding a clean semantics in which only a single exception from the enclosing try block is handled. To minimize the complexity of reasoning about aborts, JCilk signals them "semisynchronously" so that abort signals do not interrupt ordinary serial code. Because JCilk uses Java's normal exception mechanism to propagate an abort throughout a subcomputation, the programmer can handle clean-up by simply catching a thrown CilkAbort exception. This thesis documents in detail the designed semantics, the linguistic decisions we made, and their justifications. This thesis also describes the structure of JCilk compiler and how it supports the exception semantics.</Abstract>
<Abstract>(cont.) Specifically, the JCilk compiler performs a two-stage compilation process to support the continuation mechanism required by the runtime system's work-stealing algorithm. By performing static analysis, the compiler generates code to support the "catchlet" and "finallet" mechanisms for handling exceptions. The design of JCilk represents joint research with John S. Danaher and Charles E. Leiserson.</Abstract>
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