Abstract: Consider the following iterative approach to improving program performance: make a random change to the program and run it on some test cases. If the program passes the tests and is faster, repeat the procedure on the modified program, otherwise try a different random change. Modulo some caveats and details, this is the algorithm that underlies STOKE, a stochastic search-based approach to program optimization and synthesis. This talk will give a survey of the STOKE project from inception to the present and try to answer a few questions, such as
Bio: Alex Aiken is the Alcatel-Lucent Professor and current chair of the Computer Science department at Stanford. Alex received his Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Music from Bowling Green State University in 1983 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1988. Alex was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center (1988-1993) and a Professor in the EECS department at UC Berkeley (1993-2003) before joining the Stanford faculty in 2003. His research interest is in areas related to programming languages.