Special session: Invasive programming of heterogeneous multi-core systems

The idea and novelty of invasive computing is to introduce resource-aware programming support in the sense that a given program gets the ability to explore and dynamically spread its computations to neighbour processors similar to a phase of invasion, then to execute portions of code of high parallelism degree in parallel based on the available (invasible) region on a given multi-processor architecture. Afterwards, once the program terminates or if the degree of parallelism should be lower again, the program may enter a retreat phase, deallocate resources and resume execution again, for example, sequentially on a single processor. In order to support this idea of self-adaptive and resource-aware programming, not only new programming concepts, languages, compilers and operating systems are necessary but also revolutionary architectural changes in the design of MPSoCs (Multi-Processor Systems-on-a-Chip) must be provided so to efficiently support invasion, infection and retreat operations involving concepts for dynamic processor, interconnect and memory reconfiguration. This special session covers the concept of invasive computing, necessary architectural changes, and resource-aware programming of MPSoCs.