ATLAS Version 3.9: Overview and Status

This paper describes the widely-used ATLAS (Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software) project as it stands today. ATLAS is an instantiation of a paradigm in high performance library production and maintenance, which we term AEOS (Automated Empirical Optimization of Software); this style of library management has been created in order to allow software to keep pace with the incredible rate of hardware advancement inherent in Moore’s Law. ATLAS is the application of this AEOS paradigm to linear algebra software. ATLAS produces a full BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) library as well as providing some optimized routines for LAPACK (Linear Algebra PACKage). This paper overviews the basics of what ATLAS is and how it works, highlights some of the recent improvements available in version 3.8.0 (the newest stable release of ATLAS, scheduled for release in summer 2007), as well as discussing some of the current challenges and future work.