HAFLANG

HAFDAL Workshop '24

March 3rd 2024

Edinburgh, Scotland


The 1st Workshop on Hardware Acceleration of Functional and Declarative Languages (HAFDAL '24) will be co-located with HPCA, Edinburgh on March 3rd 2024.

This workshop brings together computer architects and programming language implementers to identify software/hardware co-designs of high level execution models.


Workshop Scope

The 1960s and 1970s saw LISP machines for supporting AI workloads. The 1980s saw graph reductions machines for functional language workloads. After a 30 year lull, modern hardware technology has attracted renewed interest in hardware acceleration of high level languages. This workshop brings together computer architects and programming language implementers to identify software/hardware co-designs of these high level execution models.

We invite two forms of participation: (1) submissions for 30 minute talks, (2) 5-10 minute lightning talks about related projects and early results. Please send an abstract to craig.ramsay@hw.ac.uk by November 20th. We are looking for submissions that cover the motivation, design, or real-world application of hardware technology for functional/declarative languages, their compilers and runtime systems. The work should target truly custom (e.g. ASIC/FPGA) hardware, or exploit modern hardware features for functional/declarative language implementation, across the design space of:

  • Special-purpose processor architectures for functional or declarative languages.
  • Automatic, high-level synthesis of custom accelerators from plain, high-level software functions.
  • Hardware description languages embedded in, or hosted by, high-level software languages.

Demonstrating these themes, we are excited to announce Christiaan Baaij (QBayLogic) and Carl-Johan Seger (Chalmers University) as invited speakers.

Workshop registration will take place on the main HPCA website.


Key Dates

  • 20 November 2023: Submission deadline (AoE)
  • 18 December 2023: Author notification
  • 15 January 2024: Final manuscript due
  • 3 March 2024: Workshop

Announcements

  • October 2023 - Christiaan Baaij (QBayLogic) and Carl-Johan Seger (Chalmers University) confirmed as invited speakers.
  • October 2023 - Our call for participation is now open. Please email inquiries concerning submission to: craig.ramsay@hw.ac.uk
  • September 2023 - The inaugural HAFDAL workshop proposal has been accepted. Stay tuned for further updates and submission guidelines.

Programme Committee

Robert Stewart Heriot-Watt University Associate Professor (Co-chair)
Craig Ramsay Heriot-Watt University Research Associate (Co-chair)
Christiaan Baaij QBayLogic Co-Founder
Jonathan Balkind UC Santa Barbara Assistant Professor
Kevin Hammond IOHK Head of Engineering
Matthew Naylor University of Cambridge Senior Research Associate
Rachit Nigam Cornell University PhD Candidate
Jocelyn Sérot L'université Clermont Auvergne Professor
Mary Sheeran Chalmers University Professor
Satnam Singh Groq Fellow
Phil Trinder University of Glasgow Professor

Rob Stewart and Craig Ramsay are the co-general and programme Chairs.
This workshop will be supported by the HAFLANG project (EPSRC funded; EP/W009447/1).