PhD Studentship in Machine-Learning Guided Compilation (Fixed Term)

Department of Computer Science and Technology, West Cambridge


Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 48 months.

The Project

Applications are invited for a PhD student to work on machine-learning guided and verifiably correct code generation.

Creating optimised libraries is a difficult and time-consuming task, requiring significant manual engineering effort. This process must be repeated for each new processor to take advantage of additional features, especially when it implements the latest architecture with new instructions or significant new architectural extensions, like Arm's SVE and SME. However, advances in machine learning point towards a low-cost solution to this task by automating code generation through a series of provably correct steps. A machine-learning model will guide the search for optimised code sequences, learning the best instructions to use for given intermediate code fragments and alleviating manual engineering effort.

The successful candidate will develop new code-generation strategies using machine-learning models and verification tools, suitable for deployment by library writers within the compilation toolchain, working closely with project partner, Arm.

https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/45565/