Optimising Code Generation with haggies

TL;DR

Haggies is a versatile program that generates optimized code for numerical evaluation of mathematical expressions, using techniques like Horner-scheme and common subexpression elimination, applicable across various programming languages.

Contribution

The paper introduces haggies, a flexible tool for automatic code optimization and generation, adaptable to multiple languages and data types, with applications beyond physics.

Findings

Reduces operation count through optimization techniques.

Supports non-standard data types via type inference.

Successfully applied in quantum field theory calculations.

Abstract

This article describes haggies, a program for the generation of optimised programs for the efficient numerical evaluation of mathematical expressions. It uses a multivariate Horner-scheme and Common Subexpression Elimination to reduce the overall number of operations. The package can serve as a back-end for virtually any general purpose computer algebra program. Built-in type inference that allows to deal with non-standard data types in strongly typed languages and a very flexible, pattern-based output specification ensure that haggies can produce code for a large variety of programming languages. We currently use haggies as part of an automated package for the calculation of one-loop scattering amplitudes in quantum field theories. The examples in this articles, however, demonstrate that its use is not restricted to the field of high energy physics.