Scientific Programming

Tool support for software lookup table optimization
Wilcox C, Strout MM and Bieman JM
A number of scientific applications are performance-limited by expressions that repeatedly call costly elementary functions. Lookup table (LUT) optimization accelerates the evaluation of such functions by reusing previously computed results. LUT methods can speed up applications that tolerate an approximation of function results, thereby achieving a high level of . One problem with LUT optimization is the difficulty of controlling the tradeoff between performance and accuracy. The current practice of manual LUT optimization adds programming effort by requiring extensive experimentation to make this tradeoff, and such hand tuning can obfuscate algorithms. In this paper we describe a methodology and tool implementation to improve the application of software LUT optimization. Our Mesa tool implements source-to-source transformations for C or C++ code to automate the tedious and error-prone aspects of LUT generation such as domain profiling, error analysis, and code generation. We evaluate Mesa with five scientific applications. Our results show a performance improvement of 3.0 × and 6.9 × for two molecular biology algorithms, 1.4 × for a molecular dynamics program, 2.1 × to 2.8 × for a neural network application, and 4.6 × for a hydrology calculation. We find that Mesa enables LUT optimization with more control over accuracy and less effort than manual approaches.
Machine Learning for the Preliminary Diagnosis of Dementia
Zhu F, Li X, Tang H, He Z, Zhang C, Hung GU, Chiu PY and Zhou W
The reliable diagnosis remains a challenging issue in the early stages of dementia. We aimed to develop and validate a new method based on machine learning to help the preliminary diagnosis of normal, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), very mild dementia (VMD), and dementia using an informant-based questionnaire.