Active Libraries: Rethinking the roles of compilers and libraries

TL;DR

Active Libraries are innovative components in software development that actively participate in compilation, optimization, and self-description, enhancing performance and tool integration beyond traditional passive libraries.

Contribution

This paper introduces the concept of Active Libraries, which actively generate, optimize, and self-describe, representing a significant shift from traditional passive library design.

Findings

Active Libraries can generate components and specialize algorithms.

They optimize code and tune themselves for specific hardware.

They improve tool integration through self-description.

Abstract

We describe Active Libraries, which take an active role in compilation. Unlike traditional libraries which are passive collections of functions and objects, Active Libraries may generate components, specialize algorithms, optimize code, configure and tune themselves for a target machine, and describe themselves to tools (such as profilers and debuggers) in an intelligible way. Several such libraries are described, as are implementation technologies.