A Retrospective of the Omega Project

The Omega Project, led by Bill Pugh of the University of Maryland at College Park, explored advanced techniques for analysis and transformation of dense numeric codes. This project was one of the first to use affine constraints on integer variables for static program optimization. In addition to numerous articles, the Omega Project released source code for many of their algorithms. Most of their constraint manipulation algorithms were released as the Omega Library and the text-based Omega Calculator; many of their program transformation algorithms were released as Petit (“Pugh’s Extended Tiny Isn’t Tiny”), a tool for exploring static program transformation that was based on Michael Wolfe’s “tiny” system. This document gives a brief description of the major results of the Omega Project, including both approaches to program optimization and algorithms for constraint manipulation.