Masters Thesis: Measurement-driven DSP Superoptimization

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About this opportunity:

The Ericsson Many Core Architecture (EMCA) is an in-house developed ASIC architecture designed for computation in mobile networks. Among its components is a custom digital signal processor (DSP) core, for which we maintain a custom compiler. Applications running on the EMCA DSP have strict real-time constraints and limited hardware resources, making the performance and memory footprint of compiler-generated code very important.

Superoptimization takes fragments of the code being compiled and searches for the cheapest fragment that computes the same result. The candidates come from a search over possible programs, and a Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solver such as Z3 proves equivalence before one is accepted. A notable example is Souper, which works on LLVM Intermediate Representation (IR).

A previous thesis project adapted Souper to our tool chain and ran it offline over DSP application code. That work is the starting point for this project: a superoptimizer that already runs against our EMCA DSP target. One limiting factor in that project was the cost model, and this follow-up explores an alternative. Souper decides which fragment is cheapest from a table of fixed per-operation costs. Such a table can only guess, because the chosen fragment then passes through the rest of the compiler and is transformed further on its way to machine code. On a Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) DSP, the gap is wide enough that Souper both accepts rewrites that are slower on the hardware and discards real improvements.

What you will do:

Survey the state of the art in superoptimization.

Use the compiler back-end as the cost model. Instead of scoring candidates using a static instruction-cost table, whose entries provide estimated costs for individual instructions, compile them for the target DSP and measure properties of the generated code. This allows the search to be guided by the compiler's own cycle and size estimates. Compiling every candidate makes the search considerably slower than using a table, so a central question is whether the better cost information is worth that price.

Expand the set of DSP instructions the superoptimizer can reason about. Examples of native DSP operations are multiply-accumulate and bit-field operations, which the compiler exposes through intrinsics. This should enable the superoptimizer to discover efficient uses of DSP-specific instructions that are not represented by more general operations.

Evaluate offline on production DSP code. The superoptimizer is a tool for compiler developers and is not meant to run inside the compiler, so the deliverable is a set of suggested optimizations to build into the production compiler. The evaluation will consider performance improvements and memory footprint reductions.

The project is hands-on: your work can directly influence our production compiler and DSP program performance. You will work with SMT-based reasoning about programs, target-specific compiler passes, a VLIW instruction set, and real hardware constraints.

The skills you bring:

This is a technically advanced thesis project suitable for:

Master’s student in Computer Science or Computer Engineering.

You have experience in C/C++ and enjoy working with low-level programming, compilers, and assembly-level optimization.

You have (or are willing to develop) skills in LLVM development and formal methods.

Why join Ericsson?

At Ericsson, you´ll have an outstanding opportunity. The chance to use your skills and imagination to push the boundaries of what´s possible. To build solutions never seen before to some of the world’s toughest problems. You´ll be challenged, but you won’t be alone. You´ll be joining a team of diverse innovators, all driven to go beyond the status quo to craft what comes next.

What happens once you apply?

Click Here to find all you need to know about what our typical hiring process looks like.Encouraging a diverse and inclusive organization is core to our values at Ericsson, that's why we champion it in everything we do. We truly believe that by collaborating with people with different experiences we drive innovation, which is essential for our future growth. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply and realize their full potential as part of our Ericsson team. Ericsson is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. learn more.

Primary country and city: Sweden (SE) || Linköping

Req ID: 791221