DUNE (Distributed and Unified Numerics Environment) is a modular C++ library for the solution of partial differential equations using grid-based methods.

The aim was a development model which was not attached to a single university, in order to make the project attractive for a wide audience.

DUNE is primarily a set of abstract interfaces, which embody concepts from scientific computing.

These are well-known in other areas of software development and are slowly making their way into scientific computing.

They allow the compiler to eliminate most of the overhead introduced by the extra layer of abstraction.