Futhark User’s Guide

Welcome to the documentation for the Futhark compiler and language. For a basic introduction, please see the Futhark website. To get started, read the page on Installation. Once the compiler has been installed, you might want to take a look at Basic Usage. This User’s Guide contains a Language Reference, but new Futhark programmers are probably better served by reading Parallel Programming in Futhark first.

Documentation for the built-in prelude is also available online.

The particularly interested reader may also want to peruse the publications, or the development blog.

Table of Contents

• 1. Installation
  • 1.1. Dependencies
  • 1.2. Compiling from source
  • 1.3. Installing from a precompiled snapshot
  • 1.4. Installing Futhark on Linux
  • 1.5. Installing Futhark on macOS
  • 1.6. Setting up Futhark on Windows
  • 1.7. Futhark with Nix
• 2. Basic Usage
  • 2.1. Compiling to Executable
  • 2.2. Compiling to Library
  • 2.3. Reproducibility
• 3. Language Reference
  • 3.1. Identifiers and Keywords
  • 3.2. Primitive Types and Values
  • 3.3. Declarations
  • 3.4. Expressions
  • 3.5. Higher-order functions
  • 3.6. Type Inference
  • 3.7. Size Types
  • 3.8. In-place Updates
  • 3.9. Module System
  • 3.10. Referring to Other Files
  • 3.11. Attributes
• 4. C API Reference
  • 4.1. Error codes
  • 4.2. Configuration
  • 4.3. Context
  • 4.4. Values
  • 4.5. Entry points
  • 4.6. GPU
  • 4.7. OpenCL
  • 4.8. CUDA
  • 4.9. Multicore
  • 4.10. General guarantees
  • 4.11. Manifest
• 5. JavaScript API Reference
  • 5.1. General concerns
  • 5.2. FutharkContext
  • 5.3. Values
  • 5.4. FutharkArray
  • 5.5. FutharkOpaque
  • 5.6. Entry Points
• 6. Package Management
  • 6.1. Basic Concepts
  • 6.2. Using Packages
  • 6.3. Creating Packages
  • 6.4. Version Selection
  • 6.5. Tests and Documentation for Dependencies
  • 6.6. Safety
• 7. Writing Fast Futhark Programs
  • 7.1. Parallelism
  • 7.2. Value Representation
  • 7.3. Crucial Optimisations
  • 7.4. Free Operations
  • 7.5. Small Arrays
  • 7.6. Inlining
• 8. Compiler Error Index
  • 8.1. Uniqueness errors
  • 8.2. Size errors
  • 8.3. Module errors
  • 8.4. “Module x is a parametric module
  • 8.5. Other errors
• 9. Server Protocol
  • 9.1. Basics
  • 9.2. Variables
  • 9.3. Types
  • 9.4. Consumption and aliasing
  • 9.5. Commands
  • 9.6. Environment Variables
• 10. C Porting Guide
  • 10.1. Where This Guide Falls Short
  • 10.2. Types
  • 10.3. Operators
  • 10.4. Variable Mutation
  • 10.5. Arrays
• 11. Futhark Compared to Other Functional Languages
  • 11.1. Basic Syntax
  • 11.2. Evaluation
  • 11.3. Types
• 12. Hacking on the Futhark Compiler
  • 12.1. Debugging Internal Type Errors
  • 12.2. Checking Generated Code
  • 12.3. Using futhark dev
  • 12.4. When you are about to have a bad day
• 13. Binary Data Format
  • 13.1. Specification

Manual Pages

• futhark
• futhark-autotune
• futhark-bench
• futhark-c
• futhark-cuda
• futhark-dataset
• futhark-doc
• futhark-literate
• futhark-multicore
• futhark-opencl
• futhark-pkg
• futhark-pyopencl
• futhark-python
• futhark-repl
• futhark-run
• futhark-test
• futhark-wasm
• futhark-wasm-multicore