February 12, 2026
Today, applications that require high-performance rely on libraries of hand-optimized kernels, with thousands available across various domains and architectures, while Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and their accompanying compilers remain relatively rare. A well-designed DSL can describe a much wider variety of programs within a given domain than even the most comprehensive libraries, while also unlocking powerful cross-function and global domain-specific optimizations that hand-optimized kernels cannot achieve. However, building high-performance DSLs is complex and time-consuming, often requiring compiler experts to devote years to the development. In this talk, I will introduce BuildIt (https://buildit.so), a C++ framework designed for the rapid prototyping of high-performance DSLs. BuildIt uses a multi-stage programming approach to combine the flexibility of libraries with the performance and specialization of code generation. With BuildIt, domain experts can transform existing libraries into efficient, specialized compilers simply by modifying types of the variables. Moreover, it allows them to implement analyses and transformations without needing to write any traditional compiler code. Currently, BuildIt supports code generation for multi-core CPUs and GPUs, with FPGA support coming soon. Using three DSLs built on top of BuildIt, I will also describe how BuildIt enables developers to perform complex analyses, data layout optimizations and add debugging support with little to no extra effort.
About Ajay Brahmakshatriya
Ajay finished his PhD from CSAIL, MIT in 2025 advised by Prof. Saman Amarasinghe. Ajay’s research and interests are focused on building high-performance abstraction using compiler techniques. Ajay is now the co-founder and CEO of Build4Sim (https://build4sim.com) where he is building tools to speed up SPICE simulations.