FireFly

FireFly is a reconstruction library for rational functions written in C++.

Please refer to these papers when using FireFly:

• [1] J. Klappert and F. Lange, Reconstructing Rational Functions with FireFly, [Comput.Phys.Commun. 247 (2020) 106951], [1904.00009]
• [2] J. Klappert, S.Y. Klein, and F. Lange, Interpolation of Dense and Sparse Rational Functions and other Improvements in FireFly, [2004.01463]

Table of contents

• Requirements
• Building FireFly
• Reconstructing functions
• Parse collections of rational functions
• Code Documentation
• Compiling Code with FireFly
• FireFly Executable (in Development)

Requirements

FireFly requires:

• C++ compiler supporting C++14
• CMake >= 3.1
• FLINT >= 2.5 (optional)
• GMP >= 6.1.2 (compiled with --enable-cxx)
• zlib >= 1.2.11
• MPI >= 3 (optional, mpich recommended)

Third party code

FireFly uses the following third party code:

• tinydir
• gzstream

Implemented interpolation algorithms

FireFly implements the following third party interpolation algorithms:

• Ben-Or/Tiwari algorithm [10.1145/62212.62241]
• Newton interpolation algorithm
• Racing algorithm [10.1145/62212.62241], [10.1016/S0747-7171(03)00088-9]
• Sparse rational function interpolation algorithm [10.1016/j.tcs.2010.11.050]
• Thiele interpolation algorithm
• Zippel algorithm [10.1016/S0747-7171(08)80018-1]

Building FireFly

FireFly uses CMake to generate files for build automation. To build FireFly one should first create a separate build directory inside FireFly's top directory. Afterwards, cmake should be called:

cd $FIREFLY_PATH
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DWITH_FLINT=true .. # Without FLINT: -DWITH_FLINT=false or omit this

After calling cmake the build directory contains all required build files. Assuming that GNU make is used, one can start the build by running

make

and afterwards install it with

make install

By default the code is compiled with optimizations.

If FLINT is used for modular arithmetic and it cannot be found in the default system directories, one has to add the additional flags:

-DFLINT_INCLUDE_DIR=$FLINT_INC_PATH -DFLINT_LIBRARY=$FLINT_LIB_PATH

where FLINT_LIB_PATH is the absolute path pointing to the shared library of FLINT.

If the GMP version installed in the system directories does not match 6.1.2 or CMake does not find GMP, the paths for GMP can be set with the flags:

-DGMP_INCLUDE_DIRS=$GMP_INC_PATH -DGMP_LIBRARIES=$GMP_LIB_PATH

where GMP_INC_PATH is the absolute path to the directory of where the include files can be found (gmpxx.h is required) and GMP_LIB_PATH is the absolute path to the GMP library.

One can include the support of the jemalloc memory allocation library by adding the flag

-DWITH_JEMALLOC=true

after the jemalloc library is installed and its executables can be found.

The MPI version of FireFly can be built by adding the flag

-DWITH_MPI=true

If the MPI version found with CMake is not satisfactory, one can set custom paths to the include directory and library as:

-DMPI_CXX_INCLUDE_PATH=$MPI_INC_PATH -DMPI_CXX_LIBRARIES=$MPI_LIB_PATH

where MPI_INC_PATH is the absolute path to the directory where the include files can be found and MPI_LIB_PATH is the absolute path to the shared library (libmpi.so, libmpich.so, ...) of your favored MPI implementation.

Below is a list of all build options for FireFly:

• -DWITH_FLINT=true (default: false): Employ FLINT for the modular arithmetic (highly recommended).
• -DCUSTOM=true (default: false): Employ a custom modular arithmetic.
• -DWITH_JEMALLOC=true (default: false): Employ jemalloc for malloc operations (highly recommended).
• -DWITH_MPI=true (default: false): Enable MPI support.
• -DGMP_INCLUDE_DIRS=$GMP_INC_PATH (default: not set): If GMP is not automatically found, one has to manually set the absolute path to its header files (gmpxx.h is required).
• -DGMP_LIBRARIES=$GMP_LIB_PATH (default: not set): If GMP is not automatically found, one has to manually set the absolute path to the shared library.
• -DFLINT_INCLUDE_DIR=$FLINT_INC_PATH (default: not set): If FLINT is not automatically found, one has to manually set the absolute path to its header files.
• -DFLINT_LIBRARY=$FLINT_LIB_PATH (default: not set): If FLINT is not automatically found, one has to manually set the absolute path to the shared library.
• -DMPI_CXX_INCLUDE_PATH=$MPI_INC_PATH (default: not set): If MPI is not automatically found, one has to manually set the absolute path to its header files.
• -DMPI_CXX_LIBRARIES=$MPI_LIB_PATH (default: not set): If MPI is not automatically found, one has to manually set the absolute path to the shared library.
• -DBUILD_BENCH=true (default: false): Build the benchmark executables benchmarks and benchmarks_no_bt, which perform some of the benchmarks from Ref. [2]. The functions as well as the source code can be found in the directory benchmarks. Both executables can simply be run without command line arguments.
• -DFIREFLY_EXECUTABLE=true (default: false): Build and install the executable firefly, cf. FireFly Executable (in Development).

Important standard options of CMake are:

• -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$INSTALL_PATH (default: standard path depending on the system): Path to which FireFly is installed.
• -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug (default: Release): Compile with warnings in debug mode.

Reconstructing functions

To reconstruct functions with FireFly, it offers an interface which directly makes use of a thread pool for the parallel reconstruction of various functions over the same prime field. Additionally, black-box probes are calculated in parallel.

The black box is implemented as functor following the curiously recurring template pattern. The user has to define the black box as a derived class of BlackBoxBase and provide a constructor and the evaluation of the black box:

class BlackBoxUser : public BlackBoxBase<BlackBoxUser> {
public:
  BlackBoxUser(...) {
    ...
  }
  template<typename FFIntTemp>
  std::vector<FFIntTemp> operator()(const std::vector<FFIntTemp>& values) {
    ...
  }
}

Optionally, the user can provide the function void prime_changed() which allows the user to change member variables when the prime field changes.

The actual reconstruction is done by the Reconstructor object which is initialized with the number of variables n_var, the number of threads n_thr that should be used, and the BlackBoxUser object bb:

BlackBoxUser bb(...);
Reconstructor<BlackBoxUser> rec(n_var, n_thr, bb);

The reconstruction is then started by

rec.reconstruct();

The reconstruction will run from this point until it is finished. The results can be obtained with

rec.get_result();

We refer to the example.cpp file and the code documentation for additional options and features.

Parse collections of rational functions

FireFly provides a parser class for rational functions. The functions will be stored in reverse polish notation to be evaluated for a given parameter point. Parsing collections of rational functions can be done with the ShuntingYardParser class. It has to be constructed with a path to a file which contains the rational functions and a vector of the occurring variables:

ShuntingYardParser parser(path, vars);

Here, path is a string containing the path to the file in which the functions are stored and vars is a vector of strings of the variables. The collection of functions have to be separated by a semicolon ; to be identified correctly, e.g.

(x+y*3)/(z^2+x);
(12132132323213213212/33*x + 12 * 3 - x^100*y^2)/(3*y^5);

The corresponding vector vars would thus be

std::vector<std::string> vars = {"x","y","z"};

Variables are limited to a length of at most 16 characters and can consist of lower and upper case letters, i.e. a,...,z and A,...,Z, and numbers, e.g. s12.

The functions have to be parsed only once and can be evaluated afterwards calling

parser.evaluate(values);
// Evaluates the black-box functions with precomputed values which is faster than evaluate().
// Its usage requires parser.precompute_tokens() after the field has changed.
//parser.evaluate_pre(values);

where values is a vector which contains the parameter point at which the functions should be evaluated. The function evaluate returns a vector of FFIntTemp objects, i.e. FFInt or FFIntVec, which is filled with the values of the evaluated functions in the same order as the functions are defined in the input file. Thus, it can be directly used in the BlackBox functor of FireFly. An example file is given in parser_test/s_y_4_v.m. Note that only the operators

+, -, *, /, ^

are supported. Negative exponents like x^(-10) have to be set in parentheses. For improved runtime, the evaluation should be performed with evaluate_pre which uses precomputed values of the monomial coefficients for the current field.

For convenience, FireFly also provides a script which converts a list of rational functions (stored as an expression list of Mathematica) to FireFly's parsable format. It is located in the mma_2_ff directory and can be executed with

./convert_to_sy.sh $FILE

where $FILE contains the list of rational functions.

The following operations are not supported:

• Any kind of implicit operators like 3 x. This should read 3*x instead.
• Negative exponents without parentheses like x^-5. This should read x^(-5) instead.
• Unevaluated exponents like x^(3+7). This should read x^10 instead.
• Operators followed by operators should be separated, i.e., for example, 3*-x should read 3*(-x) or -3*x. Only +- or -+ will be interpreted as -.

Code Documentation

Doxygen can be used to generate code documentation. To generate the documentation, run

make doc

The generated documentation can be found in doc/html/index.html or in doc/latex. Using the latter directory, calling make will create a pdf file.

Compiling Code with FireFly

In order to successfully compile and link another program with FireFly, one has to set the correct compiler and linker flags. These can be found in the file firefly.pc, which is installed together with FireFly into the subdirectory lib/pkgconfig of the path set by the user with -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX (or the default path on the system). The easiest possibility to compile and link code with FireFly is to import it employing the pkg-config support of a build system. When you do not use a build system, the required flags can be extracted from firefly.pc using pkg-config, e.g.

FF_CFLAGS=$(pkg-config --cflags firefly)
FF_LIBS=$(pkg-config --libs firefly)

Then, the code can be compiled and linked with

c++ $FF_CFLAGS <USER_CODE> $FF_LIBS

If pkg-config is not installed on the system, the flags can simply be read off firefly.pc.

FireFly Executable (in Development)

FireFly offers the executable firefly, which can read in probes from a file and interpolate and reconstruct the functions from it. This feature is still in development and not officially released. Currently, only the most basic options for FireFly are supported, i.e. neither the scan for a sparse shift nor the scan for univariate factors are performed.

With the CMake option -DFIREFLY_EXECUTABLE=true, one can build and install the executable if neither a custom modular arithmetic nor MPI is used.

We refer to the Wiki page for detailed instructions.