Fast Numeric Computation in Julia

http://julialang.org/blog/2013/09/fast-numeric/

by Rickasaurus • 13 years ago

35 3 13 years ago

I should point out that many of these techniques are not specific to Julia, although many of them are not so familiar to users of high-level languages since one doesn't, for example, need to think about ordering of matrix iterations when writing vectorized code. Those who write high-performance C and Fortran array code will already be familiar with much of this advice.

ihnorton• 13 years ago

It is remarkable to me that these kind of considerations can even come up in a language with the high-level expressiveness of Julia.

As I work with Julia (and read code in the base and packages), I am continually impressed by the capability to work at so many different levels, and the smoothness of the integration. From clean, readable, Python-like "executable pseudocode"; to type annotations and generic code; to code-generation with macros; to efficient data structures in-language --- and all the way down into bit-fiddling, pointer arithmetic, and inspection of IR and assembly.

As the blog post details, this layering allows a smooth transition from "making it right" to "making it fast" within a single language, and I think we are only seeing glimmers of the cohesiveness and network effects that this enables.

StefanKarpinski2• 13 years ago

Discussion of the article on the julia-users mailing list:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/julia-users/d_ucezbI...

Fast Numeric Computation in Julia

Related Stories