A Rational Approach to Portable High Performance: The Basic Linear Algebra Instruction Set (BLAIS) and the Fixed Algorithm Size Template (FAST) Library

Abstract

We introduce the Basic Linear Algebra Instruction Set (BLAIS), a collection of high performance kernels for basic linear algebra that encapsulate small fixed size computations to provide building blocks for numerical libraries in C++. The computation sizes are template parameters of the kernels, so they can be easily configured to a specific architecture for portability. In this way the BLAIS delivers the power of such code generation systems as PHiPAC [1] and ATLAS [4]. BLAIS has a simple and elegant interface, so that one can write flexible-sized block algorithms without the complications of a code generation system. The BLAIS are implemented using the Fixed Algorithm Size Template (FAST) Library which provides equivalent functionality to the algorithms in the Standard Template Library (STL) [3], but are tailored specifically for fixed size (and high-performance) operations.