FFTW

Fastest Fourier Transform in the West

FFTW Home Page
frequently asked questions
full documenation (PDF format)

benchmarks web page

Actual source files
(Sun directories):

/usr/local/fftw/fftw/ /usr/local/fftw/rfftw/ /usr/local/fftw/mpi/ /usr/local/fftw/matlab/ /usr/local/fftw/tests/ /usr/local/fftw/threads/

FFTW is a C subroutine library for computing the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) in one or more dimensions, of both real and complex data, and of arbitrary input size. We believe that FFTW, which is free software, should become the FFT library of choice for most applications. Our benchmarks, performed on on a variety of platforms, show that FFTW's performance is typically superior to that of other publicly available FFT software. Moreover, FFTW's performance is portable: the program will perform well on most architectures without modification.

It is difficult to summarize in a few words all the complexities that arise when testing many programs, and there is no "best" or "fastest" program. However, FFTW appears to be the fastest program most of the time, especially in the multi-dimensional and real-complex cases (Kasparov is the best chess player in the world even though he loses some games). Hence the name, "FFTW," which stands for the somewhat whimsical title of "Fastest Fourier Transform in the West." Please visit the benchFFT home page for a more extensive survey of the results.