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We discuss the interface design for the Sparse Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS), the kernels in the recent standard from the BLAS Technical Forum that are concerned with unstructured sparse matrices. The motivation for such a standard is to encourage portable programming while allowing for library-specific optimizations. In particular, we show how this interface can shield one from concern over the specific storage scheme for the sparse matrix. This design makes it easy to add further functionality to the sparse BLAS in the future.We illustrate the use of the Sparse BLAS with examples in the three supported programming languages, Fortran 95, Fortran 77, and C.
Duff et al. (Sat,) studied this question.