[vtk-developers] Changing floating point Types in VTK

David Gobbi david.gobbi at gmail.com
Tue May 12 11:56:52 EDT 2015


Hi Max,

>From your description, it sounds like this change would be very
labour-intensive to maintain, since all future uses of floating-point
numbers in VTK would have to follow new rules.  But I can definitely
understand the benefit of "plug-in" floating point types (I've even used
some VTK algorithms with custom fixed-point types in the past).

Can you host your changes somewhere so that interested parties can try them
out and provide feedback?

 - David


On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 2:22 AM, Max Sagebaum <
max.sagebaum at scicomp.uni-kl.de> wrote:

> Dear developers,
>
> we had asked for your opinions about a typedef for the floating point
> types in vtk and if we make this change if it would be accepted. Until
> now we have received no answer. We would appreciate it, if we could get
> some insights about the acceptance of the changes we want to make.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Max Sagebaum
>
> On Mon, 2015-04-20 at 09:04 +0200, Max Sagebaum wrote:
> > Dear developers,
> > we are currently using parts of the VTK Version 5.10 for our CFD
> > Postprocessing Tool. We have successfully modified theses parts to
> > facilitate an AD-Tool (Algorithmic Differentiation) to differentiate
> > these code parts (intention is to not just get absolute values for our
> > CFD-results, but also evaluate sensitivities/gradients). Caused by
> > further developments in our tool we would like to go with newer
> > VTK-Versions, which means repeating the changes in the code parts
> > facilitating AD. We would like to implement these changes into the
> > VTK-trunk, to avoid reprogramming and to offer the possibility of using
> > AD to everyone. We would like to explain the changes in short and ask
> > you to judge if such changes are likely to be accepted or if there is an
> > interest in making VTK "AD-able". If not, we would avoid the presumably
> > laborious implementation and would not put it into the Git/Develop loop.
> >
> > There are two main changes we had to make. To get the gradients of a
> > program, the AD-Tool defines new AD floating point types which take care
> > of the derivative computation. In order to use these AD types in VTK we
> > needed to create two typedefs for float and double. Then every usage of
> > float and double in VTK was replaced by the new typedefs. With this
> > change, it is also possible to other types in VTK. E.g. complex values.
> >
> > The second change we made, was to rename every 'static_cast' call to a
> > new function 'perform_cast'. Basically 'perfom_cast' just calls
> > 'static_cast'. If you use other types than float or double 'static_cast'
> > will complain that the conversion from eg. 'MyFloatType' to 'int' does
> > not exist. 'perfom_cast' was specialized for the AD types and therefore
> > the casts could be done. During this process we checked most of the
> > occurrences of 'static_cast' and validated that the usage will not break
> > the differentiation.
> > There are two other solutions to our approach. We could implement
> > conversion operators for the AD types, which enables 'static_cast' to do
> > the conversion. But this is mostly discouraged by the tool developers.
> > If the conversion operators are implemented, the compiler starts to
> > implicit convert the AD types and very weird things can happen.
> > The second approach would define these operators as explicit which would
> > prevent the compiler from implicitly converting them. But then VTK would
> > need to be compiled with C++11 enabled or if the user changes these
> > types he also has to enable C++11 if necessary.
> >
> > Is the any interest on the developers or users side to use VTK with AD
> > or other floating point types?
> > Thanks for your opinions and judgment!
> >
> > Max Sagebaum
> >
>
> --
> Max Sagebaum
>
> Chair for Scientific Computing,
> TU Kaiserslautern,
> Bldg/Geb 34, Paul-Ehrlich-Strasse,
> 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
>
> Phone: +49 (0)631 205 5638
> Fax:   +49 (0)631 205 3056
> Email: max.sagebaum at scicomp.uni-kl.de
> URL:   www.scicomp.uni-kl.de
>
>
>
>
>
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