To address the absence of a universal standard interface for tensor operations, we introduce the Tensor Algebra Processing Primitives (TAPP), a C-based interface designed to decouple the application layer from hardware-specific implementations. We provide a mathematical formulation of tensor contractions and a reference implementation to ensure correctness and facilitate the validation of optimized kernels. Developed through community consensus involving academic and industrial stakeholders, TAPP aims to enable performance portability and resolving dependency challenges. The viability of the standard is demonstrated through successful integrations with the TBLIS and cuTENSOR libraries, as well as the DIRAC quantum chemistry package.
@article{arxiv.2601.07827,
title = {Tensor Algebra Processing Primitives (TAPP): Towards a Standard for Tensor Operations},
author = {Jan Brandejs and Niklas Hörnblad and Edward F. Valeev and Alexander Heinecke and Jeff Hammond and Devin Matthews and Paolo Bientinesi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.07827},
year = {2026}
}