Interface for Sparse Linear Algebra Operations
Ahmad Abdelfattah, Willow Ahrens, Hartwig Anzt, Chris Armstrong, Ben, Brock, Aydin Buluc, Federico Busato, Terry Cojean, Tim Davis, Jim Demmel,, Grace Dinh, David Gardener, Jan Fiala, Mark Gates, Azzam Haider, Toshiyuki, Imamura, Pedro Valero Lara, Jose Moreira, Sherry Li

TL;DR
This paper introduces a standardized, hardware-portable C++ API for sparse linear algebra operations, aiming to improve interoperability and sustainability across diverse hardware and software implementations.
Contribution
The paper presents a new, consensus-driven sparse linear algebra interface designed to unify existing diverse implementations and facilitate interoperability across different hardware and software platforms.
Findings
Designed a cross-institutional, hardware-portable sparse linear algebra API
Ensures compatibility with various vendor-specific sparse BLAS interfaces
Provides flexibility for software developers in implementation choices
Abstract
The standardization of an interface for dense linear algebra operations in the BLAS standard has enabled interoperability between different linear algebra libraries, thereby boosting the success of scientific computing, in particular in scientific HPC. Despite numerous efforts in the past, the community has not yet agreed on a standardization for sparse linear algebra operations due to numerous reasons. One is the fact that sparse linear algebra objects allow for many different storage formats, and different hardware may favor different storage formats. This makes the definition of a FORTRAN-style all-circumventing interface extremely challenging. Another reason is that opposed to dense linear algebra functionality, in sparse linear algebra, the size of the sparse data structure for the operation result is not always known prior to the information. Furthermore, as opposed to the…
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Taxonomy
TopicsFormal Methods in Verification · Scheduling and Optimization Algorithms · Logic, programming, and type systems
