Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: He, Yifei, Andersson, Måns I., Markidis, Stefano
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.09118
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909576770617344
author He, Yifei
Andersson, Måns I.
Markidis, Stefano
author_facet He, Yifei
Andersson, Måns I.
Markidis, Stefano
contents The Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method is a widely used numerical technique for solving Maxwell's equations, particularly in computational electromagnetics and photonics. It enables accurate modeling of wave propagation in complex media and structures but comes with significant computational challenges. Traditional FDTD implementations rely on handwritten, platform-specific code that optimizes certain kernels while underperforming in others. The lack of portability increases development overhead and creates performance bottlenecks, limiting scalability across modern hardware architectures. To address these challenges, we introduce an end-to-end domain-specific compiler based on the MLIR/LLVM infrastructure for FDTD simulations. Our approach generates efficient and portable code optimized for diverse hardware platforms.We implement the three-dimensional FDTD kernel as operations on a 3D tensor abstraction with explicit computational semantics. High-level optimizations such as loop tiling, fusion, and vectorization are automatically applied by the compiler. We evaluate our customized code generation pipeline on Intel, AMD, and ARM platforms, achieving up to $10\times$ speedup over baseline Python implementation using NumPy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_09118
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimizing FDTD Solvers for Electromagnetics: A Compiler-Guided Approach with High-Level Tensor Abstractions
He, Yifei
Andersson, Måns I.
Markidis, Stefano
Computation and Language
The Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method is a widely used numerical technique for solving Maxwell's equations, particularly in computational electromagnetics and photonics. It enables accurate modeling of wave propagation in complex media and structures but comes with significant computational challenges. Traditional FDTD implementations rely on handwritten, platform-specific code that optimizes certain kernels while underperforming in others. The lack of portability increases development overhead and creates performance bottlenecks, limiting scalability across modern hardware architectures. To address these challenges, we introduce an end-to-end domain-specific compiler based on the MLIR/LLVM infrastructure for FDTD simulations. Our approach generates efficient and portable code optimized for diverse hardware platforms.We implement the three-dimensional FDTD kernel as operations on a 3D tensor abstraction with explicit computational semantics. High-level optimizations such as loop tiling, fusion, and vectorization are automatically applied by the compiler. We evaluate our customized code generation pipeline on Intel, AMD, and ARM platforms, achieving up to $10\times$ speedup over baseline Python implementation using NumPy.
title Optimizing FDTD Solvers for Electromagnetics: A Compiler-Guided Approach with High-Level Tensor Abstractions
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.09118