On 10/31/06, Travis Oliphant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm recruiting more comments on python-dev regarding my two proposals > for improving Python's native ability to share ndarray-like information. >
I believe there are another really important reason to support Travis's proposal. Python should have a general, simple, powerful and standard way to associate type metadata to binary streams. This enables efficient share or memory, but also can help a lot to achieve inter-language capabilities. As an example, I would to make some comments about MPI, the "de facto" standard for message-passing in parallel computing. When MPI specification was being developed, there were many different, incompatible libraries for message passing, and many of them (ie. PVM) usually communicated binary data following a pack/unpack approach. The MPI Forum decided to add an alternative approach, adding a class 'MPI_Datatype', and many predefined instances of this class (MPI_INT, MPI_FLOAT, etc.) in order to represent the basic datatypes (integers, floats, strings, complex numbers) in C, Fortran, and C++. Predefined MPI datatypes can be used as building blocks for describing very complicated memory layouts and derived,nested structures. This way, any implementations of this standard can support interprocess communication in a multi-language, muti-architecture approach. MPI datatypes can also be "decoded" in order to get the basic, predefined types contained in a user-defined datatype. I think the MPI example, despite being taken from a very specific domain with particular needs, has a strong connection with Travis's proposal. Pack/unpack degrades performance, but if you want to efficiently share binary data (with other languages/architecture), then a general and extensible mechanism for attaching type metadata to binary streams must me defined. I would like to know your opinions about this. Travis's datatypes in Python should be more that something to share data, they should be able to **describe** data. And I am not sure if ctypes can be be the way. Can Jython take advantage of ctypes??? Or in the near future CPython/Jython will have a 'jtypes' module? I forget! Travis/Pearu, why don't you develop a 'ftypes' for Fortran binary data, and next ask Python core developers to include it in standard library (a joke, of course)? Travis, if you think my previous example about MPI can help, I can resend this post to Python-Dev. I ask you this because I really want to help and not to make noise. Regars, -- Lisandro Dalcín --------------- Centro Internacional de Métodos Computacionales en Ingeniería (CIMEC) Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química (INTEC) Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) PTLC - Güemes 3450, (3000) Santa Fe, Argentina Tel/Fax: +54-(0)342-451.1594 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Numpy-discussion mailing list Numpy-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/numpy-discussion
