Setting a Course for Post-Moore Software Performance

Software performance engineering is the science and art of making code run fast or otherwise limiting its consumption of resources, such as energy, memory footprint, network utilization, response time, etc. Performance engineering encompasses parallel computing, but it also includes other techniques, such as caching, vectorization, algorithms, bit tricks, loop unrolling, compiler-switch selection, tailoring code to the architecture, exploiting sparsity, changing data representation, metaprogramming, etc. I will explain why the end of Moore's Law makes software performance engineering a critical technical skill for the future. I will also argue that the PPoPP community is ideally positioned to show leadership in SPE and that it would be wise to change the meaning of its acronym to "Principles and Practice of Performance Programming."