Hi all, I think this is a nifty bit of trivia. After getting my nifty Apple Dual G5, I finally got around to doing a test I had wanted to do for a while. The Numeric package uses LAPACK for the Linear Algebra stuff. For OS-X there are two binary versions available for easy install: One linked against the default, non-optimized version of BLAS (from Jack Jansen's PackMan database) One linked against the Apple Supplied vec-lib as the BLAS. (From Bob Ippolito's PackMan database (http://undefined.org/python/pimp/) To compare performance, I wrote a little script that generates a random matrix and vector: A, b, and solves the equation: Ax = b for x N = 1000 a = RandomArray.uniform(-1000, 1000, (N,N) ) b = RandomArray.uniform(-1000, 1000, (N,) ) start = time.clock() x = solve_linear_equations(a,b) print "It took %f seconds to solve a %iX%isystem"%( time.clock()-start, N, N) And here are the results: With the non-optimized version: It took 3.410000 seconds to solve a 1000X1000 system It took 28.260000 seconds to solve a 2000X2000 system With vec-Lib: It took 0.360000 seconds to solve a 1000X1000 system It took 2.580000 seconds to solve a 2000X2000 system for a speed increase of over 10 times! Wow! Thanks Bob, for providing that package. I'd be interested to see similar tests on other platforms, I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to use a native BLAS on my Linux box. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov