Thread: Re: [Matlisp-users] Matlisp subset in pure CL

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Hi Nicolas;

Wow.  You're doing some impressive work.  I like your ideas.
But ... there is one thing you may not be aware of.  IIRC, someone
correct me if I'm wrong, one of the main reasons why we did matlisp
the way it is was to avoid writing such routines in lisp altogether.
When I first contacted Ray, he had already worked out the generic
foreign wrapper suitable for fortran code.  I then wrote a script
to generate the wrapper code automagically from the lapack files.
So the idea was not to write basic matrix operatinos at all.

Having said that, matlisp has evolved along the way, with contributions
from select individuals like yourself.  I think it may be time to
consider more drastic functionality of the kind you're suggesting.
I, unfortunately, personally would not be able to participate in the development
but I think there are people out there who might be.

  My two cents, Tunc

----- Original Message -----
From: Nicolas Neuss <Nic...@iw...>
Date: Thursday, May 6, 2004 5:57 am
Subject: [Matlisp-users] Matlisp subset in pure CL

> Hello,
> 
> I have written some CL routines for elementary full matrix arithmetic
> (vector operations, matrix multiplication and inversion).  I need 
> this in
> my PDE toolbox Femlisp (www.femlisp.org) for moderately sized full 
> matricesappearing as subblocks of sparse matrices.  I first used 
> Matlisp but was
> dissatisfied with:
> 
> 1. The overhead of the FFI call which is present in both CMUCL and 
> ACL (we
>   discussed this here).
> 
> 2. The overhead of each call to BLAS operations
> 
> 3. Portability.
> 
> Recently, I replaced Matlisp by my own Common Lisp code.  It uses 
> matrixclasses which are parametrized on the element type and 
> methods which are
> compiled at runtime adapted to the matrix class.  I think this is an
> interesting approach and intend to extend this technique also for 
> sparsematrices in future versions of Femlisp.  I speculate that 
> this development
> should bring my application in a speed range comparable with other FEM
> toolboxes on unstructured grids.
> 
> Example (P4, 2.4GHz), M+!-N adds two NxN-matrices:
> 
> MATLISP (2_0beta-2003-10-14, with ATLAS)
> 
> M+!-1: 0.27 MFLOPS
> M+!-2: 1.25 MFLOPS
> M+!-4: 4.99 MFLOPS
> M+!-8: 15.25 MFLOPS
> M+!-16: 71.39 MFLOPS
> M+!-32: 186.41 MFLOPS
> M+!-64: 353.20 MFLOPS
> M+!-128: 432.96 MFLOPS
> M+!-256: 78.03 MFLOPS
> M+!-512: 72.94 MFLOPS
> 
> FL.MATLISP:
> M+!-1: 13.11 MFLOPS
> M+!-2: 41.94 MFLOPS
> M+!-4: 98.69 MFLOPS
> M+!-8: 167.77 MFLOPS
> M+!-16: 197.38 MFLOPS
> M+!-32: 203.36 MFLOPS
> M+!-64: 203.36 MFLOPS
> M+!-128: 203.36 MFLOPS
> M+!-256: 79.89 MFLOPS
> M+!-512: 79.89 MFLOPS
> 
> We see that the overhead for the M+!-operation has been largely 
> reduced,although the peak performance of ATLAS is twice as large.
> 
> Now, what is the point of this message?  I do not think that Matlisp
> becomes unnecessary because of FL.MATLISP.  In fact, FL.MATLISP 
> comprisesonly a small subset of BLAS/LAPACK now, and I do not 
> intend to implement
> all of it or to achieve the ATLAS performance for BLAS Level 2 
> operationsas GEMM! or GESV!.  But FL.MATLISP achieves a lot with 
> comparatively little
> code.  And, although FL.MATLISP is not yet perfectly implemented, 
> I think
> that there are several things which could be improved in Matlisp 
> in the
> direction which I have taken:
> 
> 1. I like my idea of parametrized matrix classes very much.  I can 
> declare   matrices of uniform element type as e.g. (standard-
> matrix 'double-float)
>   which returns (and maybe generates at runtime) a class named
>   |(STANDARD-MATRIX DOUBLE-FLOAT)| or arbitrary others.  Maybe 
> this would
>   be interesting also for Matlisp, while keeping the alias to 
> REAL-MATRIX.
> 
> 2. My BLAS methods are defined on STANDARD-MATRIX.  When called 
> with a
>   subclass, e.g. |(STANDARD-MATRIX DOUBLE-FLOAT)|, they compile a 
> method   adapted to the subclass.  Probably, Matlisp could be 
> implemented in a
>   similar way by suitably interfacing to DGEMM, ZGEMM, etc.
> 
> It would also be a large advantage if FL.MATLISP and MATLISP could
> interoperate.  This is already possible at a lower level, because 
> I have
> kept the Fortran indexing style.  But it might be reasonable to 
> strive for
> interoperability also on the CLOS level.
> 
> So, if someone has any ideas in which direction one could pursue this
> project I would like to hear them.  My routines can be found in the
> directory "femlisp:src;matlisp" (if you install Femlisp from
> www.femlisp.org) in the FL.MATLISP package.  It would also be 
> relativelyeasy to extract these routines into a separate project, 
> e.g. CL-MATLISP, if
> there is large interest in such a move.
> 
> Thank you for any suggestions,
> 
> Nicolas.
> 
> 
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