PhD position on "Semantics and Verification of Accelerator Programming"

The research group Formal Methods and Tools at the University of
Twente (Enschede, The Netherlands) is looking for

a PhD researcher (4 years)

to work on the EU Strep project CARP (Correct and Efficient Accelerator Programming), funded by the European Union.

Within the context of the CARP project, you will collaborate with the other partners in the project: Imperial College, UK; Realeyes, Estonia; ARM, UK; RTWH Aachen, Germany, Monoidics, UK, ENS, France and Rightware, Finland.


The CARP Project:

In recent years, massively parallel accelerator processors, primarily GPUs, have become widely available to end-users. Accelerators offer tremendous compute power at a low cost, and tasks such as media processing, simulation, medical imaging and eye-tracking can be accelerated to beat CPU performance by orders of magnitude. Performance is gained in energy efficiency and execution speed, allowing intensive media processing software to run in low-power consumer devices.

Accelerators present a serious challenge for software developers. A system may contain one or more of the plethora of accelerators on the market, with many more products anticipated in the immediate future. Applications must exhibit portable correctness, operating correctly on any configuration of accelerators, and portable performance, exploiting processing power and energy efficiency offered by a wide range of devices.

The overall aims of CARP are to design techniques and tools for correct and efficient accelerator programming:
- Novel & attractive methods for constructing system-independent accelerator programs
- Advanced code generation techniques to produce highly optimised system-specific code from system-independent programs
- Scalable static techniques for analysing system-independent and system-specific accelerator programs, both qualitatively and quantitatively

This Project:

The PhD candidate we are looking for is expected to work on the development of tools and techniques for correct accelerator programming. We have developed a verification technique for low-level GPU programming (for OpenCL), ba, and want to extend this to verify also the functional behaviour of applications. Moreover, the verifications should be done automatically, which requires the development of dedicated verification algorithms. Within the consortium an intermediate programming language for accelerator programming is developed. In this programming language, the developer can give compiler hints on where to parallellise. The PhD candidate is expected to develop automatic verification techniques to check whether the compiler hints are indeed applicable, or if they could lead to errors in the code.


We seek:

An enthusiastic PhD student with an MSc degree in Computer Science (or an equivalent qualification). The candidate should have a thorough theoretical background, a demonstrable interest in program semantics and verification, and some knowledge about multithreaded programming (in Java/C/C++).

We are looking for a researcher with an independent mind who is willing to cooperate in our team. It is understood that he or she works on the topics listed above, and contributes to the expected deliverables for the project.  Further we ask for good communicative and good collaboration skills. Candidates should be prepared to prove their English language skills.

As a research outcome we expect publications, (prototype) tools, and a PhD thesis.

Starting date of the position: June 1st, 2013, or as soon as possible thereafter.


We offer:

- A PhD position for four years (38 hrs/week)
- A stimulating scientific environment
- Gross salary ranging from EUR 2042 tot E 2612 (4th yr) per month
- Holiday allowance (8%), end-of-year bonus (8.3%)
- Good secondary conditions, in accordance with the collective labour agreement CAO-NU for Dutch universities
- A green Campus with lots of sports facilities

You will be a member of the Twente Graduate School in the research programme 'Dependable and Secure Computing' under the leadership of Prof Dr Jaco van de Pol. The research programme offers advanced courses to deepen your scientific knowledge in preparation to your future career (within or outside academia). We provide our PhD students with excellent opportunities to broaden their personal knowledge and to professionalise their academic skills. Participation in national and/or international summer schools and workshops, and visits to other prestigious research institutes and universities can be part of this programme.

Further information:

- FMT group: http://fmt.cs.utwente.nl/
- Dr. Marieke Huisman ([email protected])
- The CARP project: http://fmt.ewi.utwente.nl/files/projects/CARP.d1.pdf

Application:

Please submit your application before 1st of May, 2013 via http://www.utwente.nl/vacatures/en/.  We strongly encourage interested applicants to send in their applications as soon as possible.

Your application should consist of:

- a cover letter (explain your specific interest and qualifications);
- a full Curriculum Vitae, including a list of all courses + marks, and a short description of your MSc thesis; and
- references (contact information) of two scientific staff members.