Stencil pattern

The stencil pattern applies a transformation to every element in one or multiple data sets, generating a new data set as an output. The transformation also takes as an input a neighborhood of the transformed data item.

The interface to the stencil pattern is provided by function grppi::stencil(). As all functions in GrPPI, this function takes as its first argument an execution policy.

grppi::stencil(exec, other_arguments...);

Stencil variants

There are several variants:

• Unary stencil: A stencil taking a single input sequence.
• N-ary stencil: A stencil taking multiple input sequences.

Key elements in stencil

The key elements in a stencil are: a StencilTransformer operation and a Neighbourhood operation.

A Neighbourhood operation is any C++ callable entity that takes one or more iterators to data items and generates a neighbourhood. Depending on the number of iterators taking it may be a UnaryNeighbourhood or a MultiNeighbourhood.

Consequently, a UnaryNeighbourhood is any operation op that given an iterator value it and an output neighbourhood type N makes valid the following:

N n = op(it);

A MultiNeighbourhood is any operation op that given n iterator values it1, it2, ... , itN and an output neighbourhood type N makes valid the following:

N n = op(it1, it2, ..., itN);

The StencilTransformer is any C++ callable entity that takes one iterator to a data item and the result of a Neighbourhood operation and performs a transformation.

Thus, a StencilTransfomer is any operation op that, given an iterator value itand the result of a Neighbourhood operation n, makes valid the following:

R r = op(it, n);

Details on stencil variants

Unary stencil

An unary stencil takes a data set and transforms each element in the data set by applying a transformation to each data item using the data item and its neighbourhood.

The only interface currently offered for this pattern is based in iterators (following the C++ standard library conventions):

• The input data set is specified by two iterators.
• The output data set is specified by an iterator to the start of the output sequence.

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Example: Stencil operation adding neighbours in a vector.

vector<double> v = get_the_vector();
vector<double> w(v.size());
grppi::stencil(ex, begin(v), end(v), begin(w),
    // Add current element and neighbours
    [](auto it, auto n) {
      return *it + accumulate(begin(n), end(n)); 
    }
    // Neighbours are prev and next
    [&](auto it) {
      vector<double> r;
      if (it!=begin(v)) r.push_back(*prev(it));
      if (distance(it,end(end))>1) r.push_back(*next(it));
      return r;
    }

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N-ary stencil

An n-ary stencil takes multiple data sets and transforms each element in the data set by applying a transformation to each data item form the first data set and the neighbourhood obtained from all data sets.

The only interface currently offered for this pattern is based in iterators:

• The first data set is specified by two iterators.
• The output data set is specified by an iterator to the start of the output sequence.
• All the other input data sets are specified by iterators to the start of the input data sequences.

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Example: Stencil operation adding neighbours in two vector.

vector<double> v1 = get_the_vector();
vector<double> v2 = get_the_vector();
vector<double> w(v.size());
 
auto get_around = [](auto i, auto b, auto e) {
};
 
grppi::stencil(ex, begin(v), end(v), begin(w),
    // Add current element and neighbours
    [](auto it, auto n) {
      return *it + accumulate(begin(n), end(n)); 
    }
    // Neighbours are prev and next
    [&](auto it1, auto it2) {
      vector<double> r;
      if (it1!=begin(v1)) r.push_back(*prev(it1));
      if (distance(it1,end(v1))>1) r.push_back(*next(it1));
      if (it2!=begin(v2)) r.push_back(*prev(it2));
      if (distance(it2,end(v2))>2) r.push_back(*next(it2));
      return r;
    }
);

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