Bilkent ACM SIGART (Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence)

This week we will show a video on Pierre's favorite topic, the automatic synthesis of programs. The tape, part of UVC's "Distinguished Lecture Series", was recorded in 1990 by Elaine Kant of Schlumberger's Laboratory for Computer Science. Undoubtably, Pierre can bring us up-to-date on more recent developments!

Abstract: The goal of automated program synthesis is to bridge the gap between what is easy for people to describe and what is possible to execute on a computer. Application domain models and very high level specification languages are one part of the solution described here. Also required is knowledge of reusable transformations that map specification constructs to computational models to efficient code. This talk summarizes the state of the art in program synthesis and shows examples from a specialized system that generates Fortran and C code for mathematical modeling. For example, from declarative descriptions of equations and properties of fintie difference algorithms, the system generates code to the Connection Machine.