An auto-tuning approach for optimizing base operators for non-destructive testing applications on heterogeneous multi-core architectures

The field of non-destructive testing imposes rising performance requirements related to the compute resources necessary to satisfy application needs. The creation of scalable applications in that field, which efficiently utilize today's mostly heterogeneous compute resources has proven to be complicated. In order to allow domain experts coming from a materials science background, to exploit modern heterogenous computing architectures, new classes of frameworks for efficient applications need to be developed. This paper proposes a new framework to develop efficient operators and operator chains for applications in the field of non-destructive testing, based on a self-organizing autotuning approach. The framework provides a C++ Interface to define base operators and implements an Embedded Domain Specific Language (EDSL) using C++ Expression Templates (ETs) which allows a succinct definition of an Operator Chain. The framework applies various kinds of optimizations by utilizing C++ Template Metaprogramming techniques. These optimizations include feedback based auto-tuning and auto-parallelization of the resulting Pipeline based on the advanced dataflow and future's techniques provided by the High Performance ParalleX (HPX), a general purpose parallel C++ runtime system.