On Dec 11, 2007 11:04 AM, Christopher Barker <Chris.Barker@noaa.gov> wrote:
Fernando Perez wrote:
a simple, reasonable solution that is likely to work: ship TWO binaries of Numpy/Scipy each time:
1. {numpy,scipy}-reference: built with the reference blas from netlib, no atlas, period.
2. {}-atlas: built with whatever the developers have at the time, which will likely mean these days a core 2 duo with SSE2 support. What hardware it was built on should be indicated, so people can at least know this fact.
I disagree -- having an atlas version that only works on recent hardware is just asking for complaints -- I think the ONLY way to go is for the "standard" binary to be universal. Instructions should be provided for building other versions, and if third parties want to distribute processor-dependent versions, then great, but that's an extra.
Well, what I had in mind was not something that would run *only* on recent hardware. A typical Atlas build on a recent box will run with anything with SSE2, which means boxes as far back as the Pentium4, I think. Or is Atlas using anything that's core2-duo-specific in its build? At the workshop, the only problem John and I noticed was for the Pentium III user, and there were plenty of old-looking boxes around that were most certainly not Core2. Cheers, f