Eric Petit Temporary Assistant Professor (ATER)

Contact information

ELIAUS DALI Research Group
Postal address:  ELIAUS-DALI
                            UPVD University of Perpignan
                            F-66000 Perpignan FRANCE
E-mail address:   Eric.Petit@univ-perp.fr
Room: BN1-9
Telephone: +33 4 30 19 81 23
Fax number: +33 4 68 66 22 87

Research interests

• Compilation and code generation
• Specialized and parallel architectures
• ManyCore and heterogeneous architectures
• Trace analysis and speculation
• High Performance Computing (HPC)

Who am I ?

• I received my french engineer degree DIIC and Master of Research degree in computer science at IFSIC, University of Rennes I (France) in 2005.
• I defend my phd thesis the 3rd of december 2009 at IRISA, University of Rennes I.
• I am currently temporary assistant professor (ATER) at UPVD since february 2009.

PhD thesis

• Toward Automatic Application Partitionning in Speculative Codelets for Heterogeneous Distributed-Memory Systems
• (French)[PDF][SLIDES]

Advisor : Francois Bodin

Team : CAPS at INRIA-IRISA Rennes

Current Works

• My main current research interest is the usage of speculation in compiler framework. The speculative codelet model provided by ASTEX give the oportunities to extend or to create new optimisations. My recent work deals with communication optimisation in heterogeneous distributed-memory systems such as CPU-GPU system for GPGPU. I am still working on HMPP with Caps-entreprise.
• In order to explore the set of possible implementations of a same computation on modern computer architectures, considering computation time as a criteria of performance is not sufficient. Intrinsic parallelism, memory hierarchy, OS version, compiler, language, etc. are many parameters influencing performance. The performance measurement of an application is unstable and short-lived. In collaboration with LIP(ENS Lyon), and LIRMM (UM2), we suggest in PerPI project a new approach for measuring the performance based on evaluation of the potential ILP of algorithms. We did it in a deterministic way thanks to the simulation of idealistic processor (Hennessy-Patterson). Software development has begun for this project, results representation and exploitation are under my responsability.
• I am also interested in numerical precision of computation for numerical application on co-processor (HPC or embedded). The purpose is to find source-to-source code transformations that optimizes the numerical precision. I also focus on the trade-off between performance and precision. This work is funded by two projects led by Pr. Matthieu Martel (UPVD) : SARDANES (ANR) and compil'HD (Languedoc-Roussillon projects).

Publications in International Workshops and Conferences

• Eric Petit and Francois Bodin. Extracting Threads Using Traces for SoC. In Compilers for Parallel Computers (CPC2006), A Coruna, Spain, January 2006, [HAL]
• Eric Petit, Guillaume Papaure, Florence Dru and Francois Bodin. ASTEX: a Hot Path Based Thread Extractor for Distributed Memory System on a Chip.In 1st HiPEAC Industrial Workshop, Grenoble, France, May 2006, [HAL]
• Eric Petit, Romain Dolbeau and Francois Bodin. An Hybrid Data Transfer Optimization Technique for GPGPU. In Compilers for Parallel Computers (CPC2007), Lisbon, Portugal, July 2007, [HAL]

Talks and Posters

• Eric Petit and Francois Bodin. ASTEX a Hot Path Based Thread Extractor for Distributed Memory System on a Chip. in Supercomputing 06 poster session, November 11-17 2006, Tampa, Florida, USA [ACM]
• Eric Petit and Sebastien Matz and Francois Bodin. Partitioning Programs for Automatically Exploiting GPU, Poster at the General-Purpose GPU Computing: Practice and Experience workshop hosted at SC06, November 2006
• Eric Petit, Guillaume Papaure and Francois Bodin. ASTEX: a Hot Path Based Thread Extractor for Distributed Memory System on a Chip. ACACES 2006 poster session, July 2006

Softwares

• ASTEX
  Owner: INRIA - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique
  Contributor: Eric Petit, Francois Bodin, Guillaume Papaure, Florence Dru
  Astex - Version 0.9, december 2006, Agence de la Protection des Programmes, february 2007
  IDDN.FR.001.060008.000.S.P.2007.000.10600
• HMPP codelet finder wich is a product of CAPS-entreprise

Teaching Activities in Computer Science

• French engineer school in Rennes
  • Laboratory works (TP) on Lego Mindstorms RCX for architecture teaching at INSA (2006-2007 and 2007-2008)
  • Laboratory works in JAVA programming and intergiciel (CORBA, RMI) at ENST(2007-2008)
• UPVD - University of Perpignan (since february 2009)
  • Laboratory works in "Linear System with MatLab" in Semester 2 (S2)
  • Practical works (TD) in "Mathematics for Computer Science: Logic" in S2
  • Practical works in "Algorithmic" in S3
  • Practical works in "Computer Arithmetic" in S3
  • Practical works in "UNIX System Call for File Management" in S4
  • Practical works in "Parallel Algorithmic" in S4
  • Practical works in "UNIX System Call Processus Managment" in S5
  • Practical works in "UNIX System Call for Communication" in S6
  • Practical works and project in "Integration and Validity of Software" in Master 1 (S8)
  • Programming project in S6

Other Teaching Activities

• Practical works in "Practical Works with Computer" in S6 for non-computer-scientist scientist
  • MSOffice:Word,Excel,PowerPoint
  • HTML
  • Introduction to Linux: installation, configuration, main applications
  • Introduction to computer programming (in Python)

Using Lego Mindstorms as a teaching support

The Lego Mindstorms, NXT or RCX, are a good support to learn a lot of different computer science skills:

• simple programming
• assembly code
• advanced low-level C-Code programming
• real-time programming
• Complex system integration
• ...

During my past and current teaching experience, I use NXT and RCX regularly.

At INSA of Rennes, student practice low level C-code programming on Lego Mindstorms RCX. They program it in C on their desktop and then cross-compile it for Hitachi 3314 processor. The code is loaded on RCX brick and executed.
I give this laboratory works with Pascal Garcia.

The Mindstoms RCX is also used by Pr. Isabelle Puaut of University of Rennes1 for real-time system teaching. I have done a laboratory works for IFSIC Teacher Training Day in 2006 about her teaching. For real-time programming, you can load a small operating system on the brick, for instance BrickOS which handle threads. Then you program it in C-code using your OS library for real-time.

Since 2009 I am participating as a teacher to Lego Mindstorms NXT Competition for UPVD student.

• The first one is Calbots. For the past edition, it was a match between UPVD and IMERIR. In the UPVD teams, the robots are programmed in a byte code (close to assembly code) named NBC.
• The other one is a challenge between Master1 of UPVD and Master2 of Ecole Polytechnique(X) and ENSAM of Paris. A video can be found here. For year 2009 the Lego Mindstorms NXT have been programmed using LejOS. Since the only inputs for student are a NXT Mindstorms Kit and a synthetic call for tender, the student are responsible of the whole design of both hardware and software of the robot. It is linked to the practical works and project in Integration and Validity of Software I teach them. For the next edition, the students will use nxtOSEK for programming. This langage is TOPPERS/OSEK implementation for Lego Mindstorm NXT.