Mentor

Slava Pestov

Skills required

• Knowledge of a certain processor, like x86

Technical outline

Factor is completely scalar; no Factor code generates vector instructions. One solution to this is an auto-vectorizing compiler, but that is a very hard project. A simpler solution is to add primitives which take advantage of SIMD instructions on platforms where they exist. These primitives can be used to implement words like v for specialized arrays, and could give a very good speedup.

Benefit to student

The student will learn about several hardware platforms, and how to write fast numeric code.

Benefit to community

These improvements will make certain Factor programs, especially those with heavy use of numbers, faster, without intervention from the programmer.