Simulation Software Generation using a Domain-Specific Language for Partial Differential Field Equations

Domain-specific language techniques can considerably lower the software development effort and time required for problems in computational science and engineering. We describe our domain specific language for field-based partial differential equation simulations and show how it can address a whole family of such problems. Our system requires minimal effort to generate C++ software for a new equation model, but also dramatically lowers the effort needed to generate code in a different output language. We report on the lines of code for several example problems discuss software engineering implications of this automatic code generation approach.