Compiler Support for Sparse Tensor Computations in MLIR

Aart J. C. Bik, Penporn Koanantakool, Tatiana Shpeisman, Nicolas Vasilache, Bixia Zheng, Fredrik Kjolstad

Abstract: Sparse tensors arise in problems in science, engineering, machine learning, and data analytics. Programs that operate on such tensors can exploit sparsity to reduce storage requirements and computational time. Developing and maintaining sparse software by hand, however, is a complex and error-prone task. Therefore, we propose treating sparsity as a property of tensors, not a tedious implementation task, and letting a sparse compiler generate sparse code automatically from a sparsity-agnostic definition of the computation. This paper discusses integrating this idea into MLIR.