An example project that wraps the BLIS native library in Java using a Matrix API.

The implementation of the Matrix API uses Panama's Foreign Function and Memory (FFM) API and tooling to bind to the BLIS native library.

The result is a simple API and implementation. There are no memory copies required to pass matrices from Java to BLIS native methods. There are no size limits on the matrices, as would be the case if primitive arrays or ByteBuffers were used. Memory management of the matrices can be explicitly controlled.

We get the efficiency of the BLIS native library with the productivity of Java.

BLIS is a high performance CPU-based library for dense linear algebra operations.

It provides a significant superset of the level 1-3 Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS). Especially noted is the level 3 performance e.g. GEneric Matrix Multiplication (GEMM). It is one of only 2 libraries to offer GEMM-like extensibility.

BLIS is developed by The Science of High Performance Computing Group at the University of Texas at Austin

To build the project follow the instructions in subsections.

BLIS may be cloned from here:

https://github.com/flame/blis

Once cloned, configure and build:

./configure --enable-threading=pthreads auto
make -j
make install

On a machine with an Intel Haswell chip the blis header file will be located at include/haswell/blis.h and the libraries will be located under lib/haswell/, where haswell is the target architecture.

Set the environment variable BLIS_HOME to point to the local BLIS repository.

Set the environment variable BLIS_ARCH to be the target architecture. There by ${BLIS_HOME}/include/${BLIS_ARCH}/blis.h will be the path to the blis.h header file.

The Oracle builds of JDK 22 can be downloaded here:

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/

Alternatively the OpenJDK build of JDK 22 can be downloaded here:

https://jdk.java.net/22/

jextract for JDK 22 can be downloaded from here:

https://jdk.java.net/jextract/

Ensure that the jextract bin directory is added to the executable path, but be careful to ensure the executable path of JDK 22 takes precedence.

From the bindings directory use maven to execute jextract to generate Java sources binding to the native BLIS library, compile them, and install them:

mvn install

The pom.xml of the matrix project depends on the installed blis binding artefact:

<dependency>
    <groupId>oracle.blis</groupId>
    <artifactId>blis-binding</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

Compile the source using maven, such as:

mvn package