Towards increased productivity of algorithm implementation

This paper reports experimental results that support the feasibility of a new transformational approach developed by the authors for implementing complex algorithms correctly and efficiently. The class of algorithms amenable to our methods includes nonnumerical graph algorithms. Experiments were performed to measure how this approach affects productivity (in terms of the number of source lines in the implementation divided by manual programming time) and running times. Comparative benchmarks showed that productivity can be increased over a conventional ad hoc approach by factors ranging from 5.1 to 9.9 Preliminary results also showed that the running time of C code produced by this new approach can be as fast as 1.5 times that of tightly coded high quality Fortran.

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