[Numpy-discussion] Math Library

[Sebastian Walter]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:29 AM, Charles R Harris
<charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Travis Oliphant <oliphant at enthought.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 11, 2010, at 4:17 PM, Sebastian Walter wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Ermm, the reply above is quite poor, sorry about that.
>> > What I meant to say is the following:
>> >
>> > If there is going to be a discussion about creating a pure C numpy
>> > library I'd like to join ;)
>>
>> Great.   I would really like to get the discussion going.   In an
>> ideal world we can finish any kind of significant re-factoring in time
>> for SciPy this year.    It actually feels like the kind of thing that
>> can motivate NumPy 2.0 a bit better.
>>
>> It sounds to me like nobody will be opposed as long as there is
>> continuity to the project and current code still works without
>> disruption (i.e. the current C-API for Python extensions is available).
>>
>> I am interested in re-factoring in such a way to create minimal impact
>> on current NumPy C-API users, but improve maintainability going
>> forward and the ability for other projects to use NumPy.
>>
>
> My own thoughts were to have a lowlevel 'loop' library that worked with
> strided memory, and an intermediate level above that for buffer objects.
> Numpy ufuncs would be a level above that and implement policy type things
> like casting, kinds, etc.
>
> Then there is the lowlevel c-library for the functions. I don't think we
> should aim at duplicating commonly available functions like sin and exp, but
> rather that subset that are sometimes unavailable. In particular, I would
> like to get away from having to use double versions of functions instead of
> type specific versions.

This sounds reasonable. However, I'm not sure that I understand exactly what
the consequences would be. Maybe it would be a good idea that one
writes down prototypical examples that should be supported by the new
code?

Sebastian


>
> Chuck
>
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