Lazy Containers:
an Efficient Compile-time Abstraction for Manipulating Collections of Objects Using Expression Templates
Date Friday, 21DEC01
Time 2-3pm
Speaker Ali Rahimi
Affiliation MIT Media Lab
Abstract Rapid prototyping in numerical computation is difficult because both steps of the edit-simulate cycle must be fast (unlike rapid prototyping environments for GUIs, where the simulate step is allowed to be sluggish). Therefore a rapid prototyping environment for numerical computation must provide the programmer concise and expressive mathetmatical constructs that can be quickly evaluated.

High level languages such as MATLAB, low level languages such as C++, and math packages such as LAPACK offer different tradeoffs in simulation speed and programming convenience. In this talk, I will suggest that the lack of inter-loop optimization in C++ compilers makes it hard to build high level math packages. I will then show how this hurdle can be overcome by using Expression Templates.

Lazy Containers uses the Expression Template device to provide a high level C++ math package with convenience similar to MATLAB, and performance that can exceed low level libraries such as LAPACK.
Location 545 Technology Square (aka "NE43")
Room 8th Floor Playroom
Bio Ph.D. Student