On Oct 26, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Dag Sverre Seljebotn wrote: > Robert Bradshaw wrote: >> On Oct 25, 2009, at 7:33 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> the wiki has an enhancement page on better C array support. >>> >>> http://wiki.cython.org/enhancements/arraytypes >>> >>> Note that this is not about SIMD operations and whatnot, just about >>> plain >>> >>> int[] x >>> >>> The page mentions things like dynamic memory allocation happening >>> automatically behind the scenes, so that >>> >>> cdef int a[runtime_size] >>> >>> would locally allocate memory, as would subsequent slicing, I >>> guess. I >>> wonder if that's not too much magic, and if a much simpler thing >>> wouldn't >>> get us far enough already. >> >> I think dynamic memory allocation is the primary advantage of such a >> type, though the proposed SIMD type would meet these needs as well. > > Just a few notes on terminology (and feel free to protest if you think > this is wrong): > > a) Me and Kurt decided to use the name "memoryview" everywhere in the > code written in summer. The essential feature of the proposed Cython > type described in enhancements/array is a) a view to a reference- > counted > PEP 3118 buffer, b) slices returns new sub-views. This is exactly what > the Python memoryview type does. Cython adds static typing to this, > but > we decided to also name the Cython concept memoryview. > > b) There was a recent discussion on numpy-discuss where people > reacted > on using the term SIMD for anything but CPU SIMD (i.e. many people > understand "Instruction" in SIMD to refer exclusively to CPU > instructions). Some voiced opposition to this view as well, but to > avoid > any ambiguity I suppose "vectorized operation" is the most neutral > (and > that's got nothing to do with the vectors of linear algebra! As I've > said in other places, some of my vectors are sometimes stored as 2D > arrays and some of my matrices in 1D arrays...) > > If I don't get a response to this I'll update the wiki accordingly.
I'm fine with either name--I just would like to have something fast and simple that doesn't require any dependancies. - Robert _______________________________________________ Cython-dev mailing list [email protected] http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/cython-dev
