Alexia Massalin
This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources. (September 2016) |
Alexia Massalin | |
---|---|
Born | Henry Massalin January 1, 1962 |
Nationality | United States |
Citizenship | United States |
Alma mater | Cooper Union School of Engineering, B.S. M.S., 1984 Columbia University, Ph.D., computer science, 1992 |
Known for | Superoptimization |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Operating systems, optimizing compilers |
Institutions | MicroUnity Systems Engineering, Inc. |
Thesis | Synthesis: An Efficient Implementation of Fundamental Operating System Services (1992) |
Doctoral advisor | Calton Pu |
Alexia Massalin (formerly Henry Massalin) is an American computer scientist and programmer. She pioneered the concept of superoptimization,[1][2] and designed the Synthesis kernel, a small kernel with a Unix compatibility layer that makes heavy use of self-modifying code for efficiency.[3][4]
Life and career
After high school, she was given a scholarship to the Cooper Union School of Engineering in Manhattan, where she obtained a bachelor's and master's degree.[5][2] She went to obtain her Ph.D. in computer science from Columbia University in 1992, studying under professor Calton Pu.
In October 1992, Massalin joined MicroUnity as a research scientist, where she became responsible for signal-processing modules and software architecture.[5]
Synthesis
Massalin's first breakthrough product came while studying at Columbia. Massalin developed Synthesis, an operating system kernel that allocated resources, ran security and low-level hardware interfaces, and created executable code to improve performance.[2] Synthesis optimized critical operating system code using run-time information, which was a new insight previous thought impractical.[2] To support Synthesis, Massalin invented object-like data structures called Quajects, which contain both data and code information.[4]
Massalin is still working on broadband microprocessors.[6]
Personal life
Her parents were Croatian refugees from Trieste. In the 1940s, they moved Astoria, Queens, New York, where her father became a construction worker.[2]
In a 1996 article in Wired magazine, the author Gary Andrew Poole said she "could be the Einstein of our time."[2] She was well known for offering piggy back rides to people she met, which included notable computer scientists such as Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, and artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky.[7]
References
- ^ Massalin, Henry (October 1987). Katz, Randy (ed.). "Superoptimizer: A Look at the Smallest Program" (PDF). Proceedings of the second international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems. ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review. 21 (4): 122–126. doi:10.1145/36206.36194. ISBN 0-8186-0805-6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-07-04. Retrieved 2012-04-25.
Given an instruction set, the superoptimizer finds the shortest program to compute a function. Startling programs have been generated, many of them engaging in convoluted bit-fiddling bearing little resemblance to the source programs which defined the functions. The key idea in the superoptimizer is a probabilistic test that makes exhaustive searches practical for programs of useful size.
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ignored (help) (Also: ACM Sigplan Notices, Vol. 22 #10, IEEE Computer Society Press #87CH2440-6, October 1987) - ^ a b c d e f Poole, Gary Andrew (1996-12-01). "Qua". Wired. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on 2017-07-04. Retrieved 2016-08-23.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Pu, Calton; Massalin, Henry; Ioannidis, John (1992). Synthesis: An Efficient Implementation of Fundamental Operating System Services (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis). New York, NY, USA: Department of Computer Sciences, Columbia University. UMI Order No. GAX92-32050. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-07-05. Retrieved 2012-04-25.
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- ^ Poole, Gary Andrew (1998-12-24). "In the Land of the Weird, Standing Out Takes a Little Work". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2017-07-04. Retrieved 2016-02-09.
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