[SciPy-User] SciPy+NumPy on 4 major linux distributions

[Lev Givon]

Received from David Cournapeau on Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 04:59:10AM EDT:
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 2:59 AM, Lev Givon<lev at columbia.edu> wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure whether the current prebuilt libraries are built with
> > thread support. I'm also not sure whether the current (3.8.3) prebuilt
> > libraries consistently provide any improved performance compared to
> > the netlib blas/lapack.
> 
> The netlib blas/lapack built with gfortran has quite poor performance.
> Using SSE/SSE2 alone gives a significant boost. Of course, building
> your own will give improved performance.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> David

When I recently tried comparing the timing of some numpy functions
that invoke lapack routines when run against the netlib libraries and
the prebuilt atlas 3.8.3 libraries on Mandriva 2009.1 (32 bit), I
found that the prebuilt atlas libraries provide no speedup compared to
the netlib libraries (at least on the various machines to which I have
access).

							L.G.