A Programming Framework for Physics

The fundamental difficulty with scientific software is that the existing languages are eithertoo general-purpose and too low-level, or both. Thus, physics equations are entangled with theway they are implemented, even to low level details such as grid structure, cache optimization,etc. Because everything is coupled, it is difficult for the various scientific communities to adapt toalgorithm or hardware advances. More importantly, it means that researchers cannot specializeas easily. Everyone must understand physics, software engineering, and computer science to ato a very deep level, and the learning process, especially for students, is much more arduousthan it needs to be.In principle, it should be possible to independently specify (1) the scientific equations to besolved; (2) the type of grids; (3) the type of numerical methods, e.g. time integrators, ellipticsolvers; (4) the intended execution platform (desktop, accelerated cluster, etc.); (5) performancegoals, e.g. as fast as possible, minimum cost, etc.