Winter 2017 SPO600 Project

On a general-purpose computer, most highly-optimized machine-specific code is contained in the operating system, device drivers, and system libraries.

In this project, you will examine a function provided by the GNU libc library, glibc, and optimize that function for efficiency on AArch64 processors.

Resources

glibc home page
- Getting Started working with glibc
- Contributing to glibc
glibc Bugzilla at Sourceware
...others to be added...

Project Selection

Examine the glibc code to identify a function that is a candidate for optimization.
Record the function(s) you are interested in optimizing in the Winter 2017 SPO600 Participants table

Project Steps

Identify a possible approach to the problem
Test your approach.
- You may do this by testing an alternative library containing your implementation of the function.
Modify glibc. Use git to track your changes.
Submit your change to the glibc community.
- Make sure that your change does not cause regressions on other platforms, especially x86_64

Project Reporting

Blog about your project work frequently (at least 2x/week).
Submit your changes to the glibc community as early as possible. It will take some time for your changes to be accepted.

Project Phases

Phase 0: Project Plan
- Present your selected function and proposed approach to class in a 2-3 minute presentation the week of March 6.
Phase I: Initial Results
- Develop and test your optimizations
- Due Sunday March 26 at midnight
Phase II: Benchmarking and Upstreaming
- Prove that your code does not cause a regressions on other platforms (at least x86_64) and improves things on AArch64.
- Work with the community to get your changes accepted upstream.
- Due Thursday April 6 at midnight
Phase III: Upstream
- Get your code accepted upstream.
- Due Saturday April 22 at midnight