KGEN: A Python tool for automated Fortran kernel generation and verification

Kernels allow for the testing of a compiler's ability to optimize code, performance of future hardware and reproducing compiler bugs. Unfortunately they can be rather time consuming to create and do not always accurately represent the full complexity of large scientific applications.

Furthermore, expert knowledge is often required to create such kernels. In this paper, we present a Python-based tool that greatly simplifies the generation of computational kernels from Fortran based applications. Our tool automatically extracts partial source code of a larger Fortran application into a stand-alone executable kernel.