Devito: Automated Fast Finite Difference Computation

Abstract

Domain specific languages have successfully been used in a variety of fields to cleanly express scientific problems as well as to simplify implementation and performance optimization on different computer architectures. Although a large number of stencil languages are available, finite difference domain specific languages have proved challenging to design because most practical use cases require additional features that fall outside the finite difference abstraction. Inspired by the complexity of real-world seismic imaging problems, we introduce Devito, a domain specific language in which high level equations are expressed using symbolic expressions from the SymPy package. Complex equations are automatically manipulated, optimized, and translated into highly optimized C code that aims to perform comparably or better than hand-tuned code. All this is transparent to users, who only see concise symbolic mathematical expressions.