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About Me

Hi!

I am a full-time Software Developer in Compiler Back-End Development and Performance at the IBM Toronto Lab.

I have been granted a M.Sc. degree in Computer Science at McGill University in February 2005. My research consisted of developing a retargetable just-in-time compiler (JIT) for SableVM, a Java virtual machine (JVM) developed at McGill.

Prior to my master degree, I have completed a B. Sc. - Honours in Computer Science with Minor Concentration in Hispanic Languages, also at McGill University.

Resume / CV | Transcript

Moi

Allô!

Je détiens un emploi comme développeur logiciel au Lab de Toronto d'IBM dans le développement de compilateurs.

J'ai obtenu ma maîtrise en informatique à l'Université McGill en février 2005. Ma recherche consistait à developper un compilateur juste-à-temps pour SableVM, une machine virtuelle Java développée à McGill.

Je détient également un B. Sc. - Spécialisation en informatique avec une concentration mineure en langues hispaniques à l'Université McGill.

Developer Information

Sourceforge.net username: davidbelanger

Gentoo Forums username: iTux

Current Projects

SableJIT
SableJIT is a retargetable just-in-time compiler for SableVM. Currently, the following platforms are supported:
- GNU/Linux / x86
- GNU/Linux / ppc
- FreeBSD / x86
- Mac OS X / ppc
- Solaris / sparc
SableJIT is still unstable and is therefore not ready yet for real-world applications. A development version is available in SableVM subversion repository.
SableVM
As a SableVM core developer, my contributions to the SableVM project (other than SableJIT) include:
- Implemented part of the reflection functionality.
- Ported SableVM to the PowerPC architecture on both Debian GNU/Linux and Mac OS X.
- Implemented some JNI functionality.
- Several bug fixes.
- SableVM on Gentoo Linux (see below)
Gentoo Linux
Gentoo is currently my main operating system. I am not a Gentoo developer yet, but I have done some contributions and will be become more involved in the near future.
SableVM SDK for Gentoo
My current project in Gentoo consists working on better integrating SableVM in Gentoo. My work is available on GentooExperimental.org. SableVM SDK integrates various third party tools around the SableVM JVM to provide a full SDK environment for Gentoo. This work follows ideas similar to the Debian free-java-sdk package.
I wrote the following ebuilds related to the SableVM SDK project:
- sablevm-sdk
- fastjar
- gjdoc
- cp-tools
Other Contributions to Gentoo
- In addition to the SableVM SDK ebuilds, I wrote:
  - app-laptop/xpmumon
  - dev-java/jfor (on GentooExperimental.org)
  - dev-java/sablevm-svn: Installs SableVM trunk from the subversion repository.
- Testing SableVM on Gentoo and reporting to Gentoo developers new releases.
- Testing packages on the PowerPC architecture and informing the developers that they worked as expected.
- I helped Gentoo users on the Gentoo forums. In particular, I answer questions related to portage, programming, PowerPC, and cross-compilation.
Cross-Compilation Guide

I wrote this guide on cross-compilation.

Computing Platforms

I currently have 2 computers both running Gentoo Linux with 256MB of RAM and 40GB of disk space.

My first computer is a AMD Athlon 1200MHz.

My second computer is an iBook G3 700MHz.

In addition to Gentoo, I also have a FreeBSD and a Mac OS X installation that I used from time to time as test platforms.

I have a distributed cross-compilation environment setup on my AMD to generate Linux/PowerPC and MacOSX/PowerPC code.

Both the AMD and PowerPC ran under Debian GNU/Linux for some time.

Other Projects

I am not actively working on these project but I am interested in them. I did minor contribution to some of them.

Older Interests:
- The Fink Project: The goal of this project is to port all (eventually) Unix software to Mac OS X. So far they managed to port over 2000 packages.
- Mac-on-Linux: Known as mol, this software allows Mac OS to run inside GNU/Linux. Note to PC users, it is not an emulator, it will run only PPC hardware.

Research

My research consisted of designing and implementing SableJIT. SableJIT is a retargetable (easy to port) just-in-time (JIT) compiler for SableVM.

Thesis

The title of my thesis is: SableJIT: a retargetable just-in-time compiler.

Thesis: pdf | ps

Paper

I am the main author of a paper co-authored with Prof. Hendren (McGill) and Etienne Gagnon (UQAM) that has been submitted to Vee'05.

Presentation 1 - SableJIT Overview

I presented an overview on the design of SableJIT at the Sable Research Group Meeting on April 25, 2003. The slides are available.

Slides: pdf | ps.gz

Note: The pdf file may not display well in some pdf viewer (due to the use of the prosper package). It is okay with Acrobat Reader and xpdf.

Note: ¿ps, gz, pdf? Information on file format here.

Presentation 2 - SableJIT Update

I presented an update on SableJIT at the Sable Research Group Meeting on January 28, 2004. The slides are available.

Slides: pdf | pdf.gz

Presentation 3 - SableJIT Update and Conclusions

Final presentation on SableJIT. Slides will be made available shortly.

Projects Pages

This section contains course-related projects.

Graduate Studies

Links will be added later.

Undergraduate Studies

Skip Lists (Data Structures and Algorithms 308-251)
Designing Roofs of Buildings (Computational Geometry 308-507)
DupLoss - A Java Module for Computing and Drawing Gene Duplication-Loss Events (Technical Project and Report 308-400)
Modeling and Simulation (308-522)

Teaching

I was the course lecturer for 308-273C -- Introduction to Computer Systems for the summer 2002 term. The course web page has not been reviewed since the migration of my web pages to the www.sable.mcgill.ca server and is currently not available.

I have also done the following teaching assistantship:

Internet Programming (308-537B): Winter 2001 and 2002
Algorithm Design Techniques (308-360A): Fall 2001 and 2002

I am currently not doing any teaching assistantship as I am concentrating all my efforts on the completion of my M. Sc.

Mes Pages Web - My Web Pages

Une liste de pages web que j'ai écrit sur plusieurs sujets non reliés à mes cours. Les pages web de mes projets se trouvent dans une autre section. La mise à jour de certaines de ces pages remontent à plusieurs années mais l'information peut-être encore utile.

This is a list of web pages I have written. Some of these have been archives and are no longer updated. Note that this list excludes school project web pages.

Distributed Cross-compilation Guide: A guide in setting up a cross-compiler toolchain in a Gentoo Linux environment. The guide explains how to setup a PowerPC cross-compiler toolchain on an x86 and how to configure the system to use distributed compilation with distcc.
How to Remove Popups and Ads - This web page contains information on how to remove banners and popups ads for several browsers. Some information may require a small technical background.
La page iBook - En construction. Page web sur le iBook. L'emphase sera surtout mise sur le fonctionnement de Debian GNU/Linux sur le iBook.
Pages Linux: Pages web contenant des trucs pour installer et configurer GNU/Linux. Elles ont été écrites à mes débuts avec ce système d'exploitation alors que la documentation était limitée. Elles n'ont pas été mises à jour depuis 1999 mais les trucs fonctionnent toujours!

About These Pages

Except for very old pages, all have been written with emacs or vi on a *nix system (mostly GNU/Linux and FreeBSD).

These pages should be viewable in any browser.

File Formats

These web pages use the following file formats.

pdf - Acrobat Portable Document Format. Files in this format may be read with Acrobat Reader available for several platforms including GNU/Linux/x86, Mac OS X and Windows. Also, gv and xpdf on Unix systems are two of the many programs that can read them.
ps - Postscript file. Directly understandable by Postscript printers. Viewers such as gv are also available. On Windows systems, Ghostscript may be used to view and print these files.
gz - A gzipped file. This is a compressed file. Use gunzip to uncompress it first. On the Windows platform, Winzip can also uncompress these files.

Contact Info

You may contact me at dbelan2 (-at-) cs.mcgill.ca.

Last updated / Dernière mise à jour: $Id: welcome.en.html,v 1.34 2006/09/24 21:39:03 dbelan2 Exp $