[cec]

I think the author does a great job at venting frustration at the state of autotuning systems research, though I would disagree that the research interest has dried up. On the contrary, autotuning research is alive and kicking, the problem is that there has been few attempts to unify all the competing systems that exist (with some exceptions [1]). As such, the state of autotuning is fragmented, with no one approach able to achieve the critical mass needed to hit the mainstream.

Disclaimer: I'm doing a PhD in autotuning ;-)

[1] http://ctuning.org/