HP, University of Illinois, and NYU Announce Advanced EPIC Compiler Research Infrastructure
August 18, 1998

The Compiler and Architecture Research (CAR) group at HP Labs, the IMPACT compiler group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the React-ILP Laboratory at New York University in New York City today released the Trimaran EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) compiler research infrastructure to the academic community.

The infrastructure is expected to facilitate instruction and research in EPIC technology and to lower the barrier to entry for research and instruction in this field greatly. It also is expected to help universities participate in development of EPIC compiler technology. IA-64 -- Intel's next-generation microprocessor platform -- is based on EPIC technology, co-developed by HP and Intel.

HP Labs has been developing EPIC compilers since 1989 in the Compiler and Architecture Research group and as part of the PA-WideWord program. Extensive compiler research has continued at HP Labs and through cooperative efforts with the University of Illinois and New York University. The research infrastructure produced through these cooperative efforts is available free of charge at http://www.trimaran.org to universities interested in studying EPIC compilers.

The Trimaran team is helping universities overcome financial barriers to establishing EPIC compiler research programs by providing a research infrastructure at no cost. While many universities have infrastructures for superscalar and multiprocessor research, most are just beginning to study next-generation EPIC technology. HP believes that extensive research will produce significant gains in EPIC compiler technology and help realize the tremendous performance potential of EPIC architectures. HP intends to continue its own compiler research as well.

HP's Compiler and Architecture Research group is headed by B. Ramakrishna Rau, who holds a doctorate in electrical engineering. Professor Wen-mei Hwu heads the University of Illinois' IMPACT compiler group, and Professor Krishna V. Palem leads the React-ILP Laboratory at New York University.

"Years of EPIC compiler research enable HP to provide this information to the academic community while maintaining a significant edge in designing IA-64-based systems with the highest performance levels," said Bill Russell, HP vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Systems Group. "Continuing our innovation in advanced compiler technology and fostering a strong research infrastructure for the academic community reinforces HP's commitment to driving the broad adoption of IA-64 technology. The expertise and knowledge HP has gained in co-developing EPIC positions the company to deliver systems that realize the full potential of IA-64 technology."

EPIC, the foundation of the 64-bit Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), uses predication, speculation, explicit parallelism, and other qualities specific to EPIC technology to deliver superior processing performance and inherent scalability not available with conventional RISC architectures. EPIC compilers use access to architectural information and control over processor execution to expose, exploit, and orchestrate opportunities for parallelism within an application, thus extracting maximum speed and performance from EPIC/IA-64 systems. HP expects EPIC/IA-64 systems to offer significant advantages over existing computing platforms.