SystemDS Quickstart Guide

Welcome to the quickstart guide for Apache SystemDS. This quickstart page provides a high-level overview of both installation and points you to the detailed documentation for each path.

SystemDS can be installed and used in two different ways:

Using a downloaded release
Using a source build

If you are primarily a user of SystemDS, start with the Release installation. If you plan to contribute or modify internals, follow the Source installation.

Each method is demonstrated in:

Local mode
Spark mode
Federated mode (simple example)

For detailed configuration topics (BLAS, GPU, federated setup, contributing), see the links at the end.

1. Install from a Release

If you simply want to use SystemDS without modifying the source code, the recommended approach is to install SystemDS from an official Apache release.

Full Release Installation Guide: Install SystemDS from a Release

2. Install from Source

If you plan to contribute to SystemDS or need to modify its internals, you can build SystemDS from source.

Full Source Build Guide: Install SystemDS from Source

3. After Installation

Once either installation path is completed, you can start running scripts:

Local Mode - Run SystemDS locally
Spark Mode - Execute scripts on Spark through spark-submit
Federated Mode - Run operations on remote data using federated workers

For detailed commands and examples: Execute SystemDS

4. More Configuration

SystemDS provides advanced configuration options for performance tuning and specialized execution environments.

GPU Support — GPU Guide
BLAS / Native Acceleration — Native Backend (BLAS) Guide
Federated Backend Deployment — Federated Guide
Contributing to SystemDS — Contributing Guide