Software reuse for scientific computing through program generation

  • Authors:
  • Martin Erwig;Zhe Fu

  • Affiliations:
  • Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR;Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

We present a program-generation approach to address a software-reuse challenge in the area of scientific computing. More specifically, we describe the design of a program generator for the specification of subroutines that can be generic in the dimensions of arrays, parameter lists, and called subroutines. We describe the application of that approach to a real-world problem in scientific computing which requires the generic description of inverse ocean modeling tools. In addition to a compiler that can transform generic specifications into efficient Fortran code for models, we have also developed a type system that can identify possible errors already in the specifications. This type system is important for the acceptance of the program generator among scientists because it prevents a large class of errors in the generated code.