HPC Software Verification in Action: A Case Study with Tensor Transposition

Abstract

As HPC platforms get increasingly complex, the complexity of software optimized for these platforms has also increased. There is a pressing need to ensure correctness of scientific applications to enhance our confidence in the results they produce. In this paper, we focus on checking the correctness of libraries providing a small but important functionality— tensor transposition—used in computational chemistry applications. While several correctness tools have been developed and deployed, there are several practical challenges in using them to verify production HPC software. We present our experiences using two tools—CIVL and CodeThorn—in checking the correctness of two index permutation libraries.