Automated Rapid Prototyping of Regular Grid-Based Numerical Applications Using Generalized Elemental Subroutines

Computational scientists and engineers commonly rely on established software libraries to achieve high performance and reliability in their numerical applications. Unfortunately, this approach does not work well if the desired functionality is absent in existing libraries or if the integration is difficult. In such scenarios, one is often forced to explore alternative algorithms and in-house implementations. Such exploration can be a challenging task for computational scientists and engineers without sufficient computer science background. To address this issue, we design and build an automated rapid prototyping tool for regular grid-based numerical applications. This new tool allows programmers to specify algorithms as composition of familiar computation patterns such as those easily found in open literature expressed as generalized elemental subroutines. The tool then automatically transforms such subroutines into code which adapts to the prescribed data structures and delivers performance expected from the underlying algorithms. We demonstrate the tool in use cases including a production-grade computational fluid dynamic application.