Blas

Blas is a masculine given name used in Spanish-speaking countries. It is the Spanish form of Blaise and ultimately derives from the Latin name Blasius. In Catholic regions, the name is connected to Saint Blaise (San Blas). Beyond its religious associations, Blas appears as a personal name in literature and modern usage. A well-known historical bearer is Blas de Lezo (1689–1741), a Spanish admiral celebrated for his defense of Cartagena de Indias during the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

Blas, often written as BLAS in uppercase, refers to Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms, a standard library for low-level linear algebra operations. BLAS provides routines for vector and matrix operations and is organized into levels: Level 1 (vector-vector operations), Level 2 (matrix-vector operations), and Level 3 (matrix-matrix operations). The specification aims to offer portable, highly optimized building blocks for scientific computing.

Implementations include Netlib BLAS, OpenBLAS, and Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL). BLAS routines underpin higher-level libraries such as LAPACK and many numerical packages. The library is widely used across engineering, physics, and data science for efficient linear algebra operations.