An auto-tuning approach for optimizing base operators for non-destructive testing applications on heterogeneous multi-core architectures

The field of non-destructive testing imposes rising performance requirements related to the compute resources necessary to satisfy application needs. The creation of scalable applications in that field, which efficiently utilize today´s mostly heterogeneous compute resources has proven to be complicated. In order to allow domain experts coming from a materials science background, to exploit modern heterogenous computing architectures, new classes of frameworks for efficient applications need to be developed. This paper proposes a new framework to develop efficient operators and operator chains for applications in the field of non-destructive testing, based on a self-organizing autotuning approach. The framework provides a C++ Interface to define base operators and implements an Embedded Domain Specific Language (EDSL) using C++ Expression Templates (ETs) which allows a succinct definition of an Operator Chain. The framework applies various kinds of optimizations by utilizing C++ Template Metaprogramming techniques. These optimizations include feedback based auto-tuning and auto-parallelization of the resulting Pipeline based on the advanced dataflow and future´s techniques provided by the High Performance ParalleX (HPX), a general purpose parallel C++ runtime system.