[Numpy-discussion] Byte aligned arrays

[Henry Gomersall]

I've written a few simple cython routines for assisting in creating
byte-aligned numpy arrays. The point being for the arrays to work with
SSE/AVX code.

https://github.com/hgomersall/pyFFTW/blob/master/pyfftw/utils.pxi

The change recently has been to add a check on the CPU as to what flags
are supported (though it's not complete, I should make the default
return 0 or something).

It occurred to me that this is something that (a) other people almost
certainly need and are solving themselves and (b) I lack the necessary
platforms to test all the possible CPU/OS combinations to make sure
something sensible happens in all cases.

Is this something that can be rolled into Numpy (the feature, not my
particular implementation or interface - though I'd be happy for it to
be so)?

Regarding (b), I've written a test case that works for Linux on x86-64
with GCC (my platform!). I can test it on 32-bit windows, but that's it.
Is ARM supported by Numpy? Neon would be great to include as well. What
other platforms might need this?

Cheers,

Henry