Experiments with Allocation on Sumatra

In order to widen the types of lambda expressions that could be offloaded to the GPU, we wanted to be able to handle lambdas that used object allocation.   The following describes some experiments with allocation using the HSAIL Backend to graal.

Note: As is true of many modern compilers, graal can avoid the actual allocation when it can use escape analysis to prove that the allocated objects do not escape.  Here's an example junit test where graal can successfully use escape analysis.

But we also wanted to handle lambdas where allocated objects really did escape.  Here is a simple example where we start with an array of longs and we want to produce an array of Strings, one for each long.  You can build and run this using the instructions on Standalone Sumatra Stream API Offload Demo

package simplealloc;

import java.util.stream.IntStream;
import java.util.Random;
public class SimpleAlloc {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final int length = 20;
        long[] input = new long[length];
        String[] output = new String[length];
        Random rand = new Random();

    
        // Initialize the input array - not offloaded
        IntStream.range(0, length).forEach(p -> {
            input[p] = rand.nextLong();
        });

        // call toString on each input element - we mark this as offloadable
        IntStream.range(0, length).parallel().forEach(p -> {
            output[p] = Long.toString(input[p]);
        });

        // Print results - not offloaded
        IntStream.range(0, length).forEach(p -> {
            System.out.println(output[p]);
        });
    }
}