'Self-Tuning' Software Adapts to Its Environment
Barry A. Cipra · Science · 1999
COMPUTER SCIENCENew self-tuning software probes the capabilities of the hardware it's running on and generates code that takes advantage of what it finds. The software--mostly designed for scientific computation--creates subroutines for common computational tasks, such as multiplying matrices. The gain in efficiency from such subroutines can be dramatic, computer scientists say, offering up to 300% improvement in performance over portable codes that run on a wide range of machines.