Move towards more effective code generation

According to Dr Fischer, who has spent much of his career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), one of the collaborators on this project, software developers generally rely on code generation as a key technology to translate high-level models into code. He began working on programme synthesis at NASA, devising a system which allows users to write high-level descriptions of the problem they are trying to solve from which code can be generated automatically to suit the user's needs.

Although this speeds up development and increases productivity and reliability, the output code often differs from the user's exact requirements and thus needs customisation. Over a three year period, Dr Fischer proposes to develop a domain-specific code generator with the capacity to support reliable code customisation. 'This is a very useful method,' he commented. 'It can be used in engineering – for example, it can be used to translate differential equations or statistical models into code.'

'This research is about making changes to the output of code generators,' he said. 'It's about making the code generator more flexible without having to go into the inner guts of the machine. Users in safety-critical application domains such as automotive and avionics systems will particularly benefit from the assurance support we can provide for customisations.'

Source: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/about/bernd_fischer.php