Re: [9fans] plan9 for calculations

[Fernan Bolando <fernanbolando@mailc.net>]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 5:31 AM, Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I noticed there are some thoughts about using plan9 on supercomputers.
> For me supercomputers are usually used to do some heavy calculations.
> And this leads me to a question. What software is then used for
> programming these calculations? (I mean e.g. linear algebra, i.e.
> matrix, calculations.) Where can one read about that?
>
> More, it also leads me to a (perhaps) simpler question. What is the
> situations with ordinary machines?
>
> Untill now I have used several libraries in linux, all of them somehow
> based on lapack. I used C language (c-lapack), python (numpy), and now
> I do some programming in Fortran (Intel MKL). From my experience I
> would say: writing programs in C is a nightmare (for me next to no-go
> again), using python with numpy is a breeze, using Fortran (95) is
> sort of fine. C and Fortran run faster than python, but the factor,
> when I played with it, surprised me to be sth. like 3x (expecting a
> worse result).
>
> Now I've been thinking, If I were to write sth. in plan9, what would
> be the way to try?
> Recently I heard about eigen2 library, which seems to be nice (high
> performance, few dependencies), but for C++...
>
> Thank you for any suggestion
> Ruda
>
> PS.: It could be that plan9, being more a os-research system than
> anything else, is simply no suitable for such a use (there are no
> plotting libraries, other utilities). Perhaps it's not a good idea at
> all to try to use plan9 like that because it would be more work than
> anything. Maybe using linux for such things with all its tools is just
> ok. If you share this idea, just say it too, please.
>
>

Its not supercomputer level, but I have a sparse matrix solver in my
contrib. I use it along with haskell as simple replacement for octave.
It is mostly a collection of scripts right I am hoping to consolidate
it later as a single package. I also cannot give you a alot of example
mainly because it will translate to an actual project I did for my day
job although those were done on mathcad

I did notice that for some plotting needs simply piping it plot
command is adequate instead of bloating my tools with plot routines.

fernan

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