Many useful tasks in data science and machine learning applications can be written as simple variations of matrix multiplication. However, users have difficulty performing such tasks as existing matrix/vector libraries support only a limited class of computations hand-tuned for each unique hardware platform. Users can alternatively write the task as a simple nested loop but current compilers are not sophisticated enough to generate fast code for the task written in this way. To address these issues, we extend an open-source compiler to recognize and optimize these matrix multiplication-like tasks. Our framework, called Amulet, uses both database-style and compiler optimization techniques to generate fast code tailored to its execution environment on CPUs. Amulet achieves speedups on a variety of matrix multiplication-like tasks compared to existing compilers while handling a much broader class of computations compared to libraries.

Modern database management systems employ sophisticated query optimization techniques that enable the generation of efficient plans for queries over very large data sets. A variety of other applications also process large data sets, but cannot leverage database-style query optimization for their code. We therefore identify an opportunity to enhance an open-source programming language compiler with database-style query optimization. Our system dynamically generates execution plans at query time, and runs those plans on chunks of data at a time. Based on feedback from earlier chunks, alternative plans might be used for later chunks. The compiler extension could be used for a variety of data-intensive applications, allowing all of them to benefit from this class of performance optimizations.