Specification

This page is the Eä language and library specification for eacompute. It is the normative reference for what the compiler accepts and the semantics of every built-in operation.

The specification is structured as the following parts:

  • Type System — scalar, vector, pointer, and struct types; type rules including integer/float literal defaults and forbidden implicit conversions.
  • All Intrinsics — every built-in function: memory (load/store/gather), math, reduction, vector, conversion, debug.
  • CLI Reference — the ea driver: compile, bind, inspect, print-target; target-feature flags (--avx512, --fp16, --i8mm, --dotprod); cross-compilation triple syntax.
  • ARM / NEON — AArch64-specific intrinsic surface, vector-width constraints, cross-compilation recipe, and the portable-kernels pattern.
  • Binding Annotations — out qualifier, length-collapse via [cap: n], and the .ea.json metadata schema consumed by language bindings.
  • Python API — the ea bind --python-generated module surface.
  • ea bench — manifest schema, harness JSONL contract, baseline diff semantics.

Normative vs informative

The seven documents above are normative: the compiler's behavior is what they describe, and divergence is a bug in either the compiler or the spec.

The Guide and the Cookbook are informative — teaching material and worked examples. Where they conflict with the spec, the spec wins.

Stability and deprecation

The intrinsic and library API surface follows a deprecation cycle:

  1. Minor release. The old name continues to work and emits a deprecation warning at every call site. The replacement is registered in src/typeck/deprecations.rs, and a migration entry lands in the upcoming-major-release file under docs/migrations/.
  2. Major release. The old name is removed. Callers who ignored the warning now get an unknown intrinsic error; the migration file is the canonical recipe.

The cargo public-api CI gate prevents accidental Rust-side public-API drift (snapshot at docs/public-api.txt).

Version

This specification reflects eacompute on main. For the spec at a specific tagged version, browse the same files from that tag.