[Numpy-discussion] Meta: too many numerical libraries doing the same thing?

[Chris Barker]

"Paul F. Dubois" wrote:

> We had some meetings to discuss using blitz and the truth is that as
> wrapped by Python there is not much to gain. The efficiency of blitz
> comes up when you do an array expression in C++. Then x = y + z + w + a
> + b gets compiled into one loop with no temporary objects created. But
> this trick is possible because you can bind the assignment. In python
> you cannot bind the assignment so you cannot do a lazy evaluation of the
> operations, unless you are willing to go with some sort of function call
> like x = evaluate(y + z + w). Immediate evaluations means creating
> temporaries, and performance is dead.
> 
> The only gain then would be when you passed a Python-wrapped blitz array
> back to C++ and did a bunch of operations there.

Personally, I think this could be a big gain. At the moment, if you
don't get the performance you need with NumPy, you have to write some of
your code in C, and using the Numeric and Python C API is a whole lot of
work, particularly if you want your function to work on non-contiguous
arrays and/or arrays of any type. I don't know much C++, and I have no
idea if Blitz++ fits this bill, but it seemed to me that using an object
oriented framework that could take care of reference counting, and allow
you to work with generic arrays, and index them naturally, etc, would be
a great improvement, even if the performance was the same as the current
C API. Perhaps NumPy2 has accomplished that, it sounds like it is a step
in the right direction, at least.

In a sentence: the most important reason for using a C++ object oriented
multi-dimensional array package would be easy of use, not speed.

It's nice to hear Blitz++ was considered, it was proably rejected for
good reason, but it just looked very promising to me.

-Chris








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Christopher Barker,
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