At Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:27:57 -0400 (EDT), Robert G. Brown wrote: > a) Are there plans for a 64-bit GSL RNG interface? A number of my > correspondants are working on algorithms that can run equally well at 64 > bits, and 64 bit unsigned ints invert to double precision uniform > deviates.
Is it possible to do it using the existing interface in some way? If it would need a duplicate 64-bit interface it's not really feasible. > b) Are there plans for a "vectorized" interface? I'd envision this > as a user-selectable switch on the creation/initialization step that > builds (say) a page-sized buffer. On the first call, this buffer would > be filled with random bits in a single step, keeping the generation code > on the CPU and cache and permitting certain pipelining optimizations. > Subsequent calls would simply walk a pointer through the buffer to the > end, where the "refill buffer" command would once again be called and > the pointer reset to the beginning before returning. The possibility is there to do that, or to provide a gsl_rng_get_array function. If there is a realistic benchmark that shows a large performance improvement (>2x) then that would be a good motivation. Currently it seems like motivation is the missing ingredient. -- Brian Gough
