highway

{
  "aliases": [],
  "alternatives": [
    "Boost.SIMD",
    "Vc",
    "Eve",
    "Intel IPP"
  ],
  "build_dependencies": [
    "cmake"
  ],
  "categories": [
    "library",
    "header-only-library",
    "simd"
  ],
  "caveats": null,
  "conflicts_with": [],
  "dependencies": [],
  "deprecated": 0,
  "deprecation_reason": null,
  "desc": "Performance-portable, length-agnostic SIMD with runtime dispatch",
  "disable_reason": null,
  "disabled": 0,
  "enrichment_fetched_at": "2026-06-20T23:38:38+00:00",
  "first_seen": "2026-06-20T23:34:18+00:00",
  "full_name": "highway",
  "github_default_branch": "master",
  "github_last_commit_at": "2026-06-20T15:49:40Z",
  "github_readme_excerpt": "# Efficient and performance-portable vector software\n\n[//]: # (placeholder, do not remove)\n\nHighway is a C++ library that provides portable SIMD/vector intrinsics.\n\n[Documentation](https://google.github.io/highway/en/master/)\n\nPreviously licensed under Apache 2, now dual-licensed as Apache 2 / BSD-3.\n\n## Why\n\nWe are passionate about high-performance software. We see major untapped\npotential in CPUs (servers, mobile, desktops). Highway is for engineers who want\nto reliably and economically push the boundaries of what is possible in\nsoftware.\n\n## How\n\nCPUs provide SIMD/vector instructions that apply the same operation to multiple\ndata items. This can reduce energy usage e.g. *fivefold* because fewer\ninstructions are executed. We also often see *5-10x* speedups.\n\nHighway makes SIMD/vector programming practical and workable according to these\nguiding principles:\n\n**Does what you expect**: Highway is a C++ library with carefully-chosen\nfunctions that map well to CPU instructions without extensive compiler\ntransformations. The resulting code is more predictable and robust to code\nchanges/compiler updates than autovectorization.\n\n**Works on widely-used platforms**: Highway supports seven architectures; the\nsame application code can target various instruction sets, including those with\n\u0027scalable\u0027 vectors (size unknown at compile time). Highway only requires C++17\n(language features, not necessarily the library) and supports four families of\ncompilers. If you want to use Highway on other platforms, please raise an issue.\n\n**Flexible to deploy**: Applications using Highway can run on heterogeneous\nclouds or client devices, choosing the best available instruction set at\nruntime. Alternatively, developers may choose to target a single instruction set\nwithout any runtime overhead. In both cases, the application code is the same\nexcept for swapping `HWY_STATIC_DISPATCH` with `HWY_DYNAMIC_DISPATCH` plus one\nline of code. See also @kfjahnke\u0027s\n[introduction to dispatching](https://g",
  "github_repo": "google/highway",
  "github_stars": 5635,
  "github_topics": [
    "avx",
    "avx-512",
    "avx-instructions",
    "avx2",
    "avx512",
    "intrinsics",
    "neon",
    "simd",
    "simd-instructions",
    "simd-intrinsics",
    "simd-library",
    "simd-parallelism",
    "simd-programming",
    "sse42",
    "wasm"
  ],
  "homepage": "https://github.com/google/highway",
  "homepage_og_description": null,
  "homepage_og_image": null,
  "homepage_title": null,
  "installs_30d": 19853,
  "installs_365d": 564817,
  "installs_90d": 94284,
  "keg_only": 0,
  "keg_only_reason": null,
  "last_seen": "2026-06-20T23:34:18+00:00",
  "license": "Apache-2.0 OR BSD-3-Clause",
  "llm_generated_at": "2026-06-20T23:43:37+00:00",
  "llm_model": "claude-haiku-4-5",
  "name": "highway",
  "oldnames": [],
  "one_liner": "C++ header-only SIMD library providing portable vector intrinsics with runtime CPU dispatch across x86, ARM, WebAssembly, and other architectures.",
  "optional_dependencies": [],
  "rank_30d": 236,
  "rank_365d": 128,
  "rank_90d": 188,
  "raw_hash": "8d4ee18e3c485a1c",
  "recommended_dependencies": [],
  "revision": 0,
  "ruby_source_path": "Formula/h/highway.rb",
  "tap": "homebrew/core",
  "test_dependencies": [],
  "uses_from_macos": [],
  "version_head": "HEAD",
  "version_stable": "1.4.0",
  "versioned_formulae": [],
  "why_use_this": "Highway lets you write performance-critical code once and automatically dispatch to the fastest available CPU instructions (SSE4.2, AVX, AVX-512, NEON, etc.) at runtime. Unlike hand-rolled intrinsics or compiler autovectorization, it\u0027s predictable, maintainable, and works reliably across platforms. Essential for numeric libraries, video codecs, and data-parallel workloads that need 5\u201310x speedups with lower energy use."
}