Futhark

Description #

Futhark is a high-performance, purely functional language designed for parallel programming on GPUs and multi-core CPUs.

History #

Futhark was developed at the University of Copenhagen to explore how functional programming can be optimized for data-parallel computation. Its name comes from the ancient runic alphabet “Futhark.”

Hello World Code #

entry main : []u8 = map u8.i32 (map i32.u8 [72,101,108,108,111,44,32,87,111,114,108,100,33])

How to Run #

Option 1: Online
Futhark Playground

Option 2: Local

• Install via Homebrew or from source:

brew install futhark

Compile and run:

futhark opencl hello.fut
./hello

Key Concepts #

• Pure functional language
• Explicit data-parallelism
• Compiles to GPU and multicore CPU code
• Strong static typing
• Array programming focus
• Higher-order functions
• Map/reduce/fold constructs
• Fusion optimization
• Real-time numeric performance
• Academic and research use

Try It Online #

https://futhark-lang.org/playground

Fun Facts #

• Futhark can outperform C in certain parallel benchmarks due to advanced loop fusion.
• It focuses entirely on numerical computation, not general-purpose use.
• Built to test the limits of optimizing pure functional code for hardware.

Resources #

Official Site
Docs
GitHub Repo
Tutorial