For those wondering what it's for: it's basically NumPy + a JIT compiler with standard Haskell syntax (you mostly just need to change the type signatures, not the code).
It can vectorize, parallelize on the CPU, or offload to the GPU automatically.
Making Haskell programs go faster. I will say that Accelerate is in most cases not faster than similar libraries for other languages (e.g. Jax), but the integration with normal Haskell is very pleasant. As Haskell is a very nice and practical language for general-purpose programming, it's convenient to be able to use Accelerate for those parts where numerical performance is critical (but not so critical that you rewrite the entire program in CUDA or C).
Yes, and that’s fine. There are many notable Michael Jordans for instance. Maybe they could have taken the opportunity to call this one Haccelerate or Haskellerate or something like that but there is no reason for everything to have a distinct name. Context has sufficient namespacing.
I think we ran out of `$NameFast` and `Fast$Name`, so people are just using plain verbs as names now, ideally as similar to something existing as possible, so you can attempt to steal their SEO and similar nifty "growth hacking" stuff.
It can vectorize, parallelize on the CPU, or offload to the GPU automatically.
It's a very mature project, maybe 10+ years old.
Jokes aside, types should help a lot.
/s
Overlaps in naming happen, especially when we all want to choose simple and catchy words like "Accelerate."
also, accelerate was first published to Hackage in 2009 though so it isn't an especially new thing.