VecCore is a simple abstraction layer on top of other vectorization libraries. It provides an architecture-independent API for expressing vector operations on data. Code written with this API can then be dispatched to one of several backends like Vc, UME::SIMD, or a scalar implementation. This allows one to get the best performance on platforms supported by Vc and UME::SIMD without losing portability to unsupported architectures like ARM and PowerPC, for example, where the scalar backend can be used instead without requiring changes in user code. Another advantage is that, unlike with compiler intrinsics, the same code can be compiled for SSE, AVX2, AVX512, etc, without modifications.
VecCore was originally developed as part of the VecGeom library, to enable portable SIMD programming in both VecGeom and GeantV projects.
VecCore is now part of the ROOT project on GitHub. The main repository is available at https://github.com/root-project/veccore.
VecCore supports Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. To compile software using VecCore, you will need a compiler with support for C++11. We recommend using at least the following compiler versions:
- GCC 5.3.0
- Clang 4.0
- AppleClang 7.3.0
- Intel® C/C++ Compiler 18.0
- Microsoft Visual Studio 15 2017
Additionally, you will need CMake 3.9 or later, and you may want to install a SIMD library such as
and/or
- Nvidia's CUDA SDK (version 8.0 or later).
For support and other questions, please contact Guilherme Amadio at [email protected].