[Numpy-discussion] Numpy and PEP 343

[Tim Hochberg]

Christopher Barker wrote:

> eric jones wrote:
>
>> All this to say, I think weave basically accomplishes what Tim wants 
>> with a different mechanism (letting C++ compilers do the optimization 
>> instead of writing this optimization at the python level).  It does 
>> require a compiler on client machines in its current form (even that 
>> can be fixed...)
>
>
> Perhaps by teaching Psyco about nd-arrays?


Psyco is unlikely to ever be much good for floating point stuff.  This 
is because it only knows about longs/pointers and arrays of 
longs/pointers. The floating point support it has at present involves 
breaking a double into two long sized chunks. Then whenever you need to 
manipulate the float you have to find the pieces and put them back 
together[1]. All of this means that float support is much poorer then 
integer support in Psyco. In theory this could be fixed, but since 
Armin's no longer actively working on Psyco, just maintaining it, I 
don't see this changing. Perhaps when Psyco like technology gets 
incorporated in PyPy it will include better support for floating point.


Regards,

-tim



[1] This has all gotten rather fuzzy too me now, it's been a while since 
I looked at it and my understanding was at best fragile anyway.