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arrowmetal (Python)

Apache Arrow arrays on the Apple silicon GPU, from Python. A ctypes wrapper over libArrowMetalC.dylib; input and output go through the Arrow C Data Interface, so it composes with pyarrow, Polars, pandas and DuckDB.

Install

Two ways: a wheel built with scripts/build_wheel.sh and installed with pip install python/dist/arrowmetal-0.1.0-*.whl (macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon; the wheel bundles libArrowMetalC.dylib, and pyarrow is its only dependency), or from this repository.

From source, the development path. Needs the Swift toolchain:

DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer \
  swift build -c release --product ArrowMetalC
# that builds .build/release/libArrowMetalC.dylib
pip install pyarrow
PYTHONPATH=python python -c "import arrowmetal as am; print(am.device_name())"

From a wheel, which carries the dylib and needs no Swift toolchain at install time:

# the wheel build frontend, once
pip install build
# swift build, then the wheel
scripts/build_wheel.sh
# pyarrow comes with it
pip install python/dist/arrowmetal-0.1.0-*.whl
# optional bridges
pip install "$(echo python/dist/arrowmetal-0.1.0-*.whl)[polars,duckdb,pandas]"
python -c "import arrowmetal as am; print(am.device_name())"

The wheel is arrowmetal-0.1.0-py3-none-macosx_14_0_arm64.whl; the build script prints its size. It is macOS arm64 only: it links Metal and holds an arm64 binary. Extras polars, duckdb, pandas and test pull in the libraries the corresponding bridges and the test suite want; none of them are needed to import arrowmetal.

The first thing to run needs nothing beyond the wheel itself (pyarrow comes with it):

import pyarrow as pa, arrowmetal as am

# this small array is copied in; large pyarrow buffers are page aligned
# and are borrowed; out is zero-copy
col = am.array(pa.array([1, None, 3, 40]))
big = col.filter_where(">", 2)                 # GPU
print(big.sum(), big.to_arrow())               # 43  [3, 40]

keys = am.array(pa.array([0, 1, 0, 2], pa.int32()))
print(keys.group_by(3).sum(col).to_arrow())    # [4, null, 40]

With the polars extra (or any installed Polars), a Series crosses through Arrow the same way:

import polars as pl
col = am.array(pl.Series([1, None, 3, 40]).to_arrow())
print(pl.from_arrow(col.filter_where(">", 2).to_arrow()))

Float64 columns (NumPy's and pandas' default) run entirely on the GPU: compare, filter, take, sum and arithmetic use a software IEEE-754 implementation that is bit-exact with the CPU. Use with am.batch(): around a chain of operations to pay one GPU round trip instead of one per call.

See Benchmarks/python_gpu_bench.py for a side-by-side with Polars, pyarrow.compute and pandas on the same data.

Building a wheel

pip install build                    # the wheel build frontend
scripts/build_wheel.sh               # swift build, then the wheel
# just the wheel, when .build/release/libArrowMetalC.dylib exists
python/build_wheel.sh

python/build_wheel.sh copies .build/release/libArrowMetalC.dylib into python/arrowmetal/_lib/, runs python -m build --wheel in python/ with the platform tag macosx_14_0_arm64, checks that the dylib really is inside the archive, and prints the wheel's path and size. scripts/build_wheel.sh is the same thing with swift build -c release --product ArrowMetalC in front. The version comes from one place, __version__ in arrowmetal/__init__.py; pyproject.toml reads it.

ARROWMETAL_DYLIB points the script at a dylib somewhere other than .build/release, and PLAT_TAG overrides the platform tag.

Where the dylib is found

arrowmetal looks for libArrowMetalC.dylib in this order:

  1. $ARROWMETAL_LIB, the full path to a dylib. It wins over everything else, because pinning one specific build is exactly what the A/B benchmark scripts and the merge gate use it for — a stale arrowmetal/_lib/ left behind by a wheel build in the same checkout must not shadow it. Setting it to a path that does not exist is an error, not a silent fall-back to some other dylib.
  2. Bundled in the installed package, arrowmetal/_lib/libArrowMetalC.dylib — what a wheel install has.
  3. The development build, .build/release/libArrowMetalC.dylib beside a source checkout (then .build/debug, then /usr/local/lib and /opt/homebrew/lib).

When none of the three exists the import fails with an OSError that names all three and how to satisfy each.

Tests

pip install pytest
DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer swift build -c release --product ArrowMetalC
PYTHONPATH=python python -m pytest python/tests -q

python/tests/test_arrowmetal.py checks import and round trip for int64/float64/float32/bool/string with nulls, reductions, compare/filter/filter_where, take, slice, cast, arithmetic (float64 included), boolean logic, group-by, the string kernels, with am.batch(): against the unbatched results, and Polars interop. Every result is compared to pyarrow.compute or plain Python. Polars tests skip when Polars is absent; the suite needs a real Metal device.

Not covered by the dense-key MetalArray.group_by(key_count) path: min/max on 64-bit values, mean on Float32, and Float64 values for any aggregate; python/tests pins those as expected errors so the tests flag it when they land. am.group_by(keys) runs every aggregate on Float64 values (python/tests/test_arrowmetal.py::test_group_by_arbitrary_keys_matches_pyarrow).

Polars

Three tiers, all in this repository — see docs/POLARS.md:

import polars as pl, arrowmetal as am

# -> dict[str, MetalArray], zero copy
am.from_polars(df)
# tier 1: the GPU around Polars
df.arrowmetal.group_by("k").sum("v")
# tier 2: inside a lazy plan (needs the Rust plugin)
pl.col("v").arrowmetal.sum()
# tier 3: Polars runs the plan, the GPU finishes it
lf.arrowmetal.collect_gpu(query)

import arrowmetal still does not import Polars: the bridge loads on first use (or at import when Polars is already loaded). Tier 2 needs one extra build, cd polars-plugin && cargo build --release; the other two are pure Python over the Arrow C Data Interface. PYTHONPATH=python python -m pytest python/tests/test_polars.py -q runs the suite.