Generality.

Our experiments show that our annotation language is effective when applied to PLAPACK. We believe that the language will also be effective for other libraries because the information conveyed by the basic annotations is fundamental to the analysis of any software, and the advanced annotations support abstract interpretation [9,17], which is useful for modeling domain-specific information. In particular, such analysis is useful to any library that provides specialized routines that are tailored for specific contexts. For example, the Open GL graphics standard [21] can customize various matrix transformations to exploit particular properties of matrices and matrix operations. In operating systems, specialized file system I/O routines can be produced that are optimized for specific system states [10]: a specialized read routine can be created for the common situation in which the file is known to be open and the file position is correctly positioned to the next unread byte. As a final example, most layered systems can benefit from passing state information across layers [1], providing contextual information that can trigger the use of specialized routines.