Re: GSL, VSIPL, and the ultimate numerical library

[Brian Gough <bjg at network-theory dot co dot uk>]

That is an interesting message. Here are my thoughts.  A single grand
library may not be a desirable goal -- it would constrain the user to
operate within its parameters and implies a centralized development
model. I believe the most flexible approach involves having many
libraries:

 specialised libraries for different specialist areas 
 a general library covering the basics 

LAPACK, FFTW, etc would be examples of specialised libraries.  GSL
would fall into the general category.  The role of the general library
is to provide basic functionality and interoperability.  In the
C/FORTRAN and C-based VHLL world this is fairly straightforward.

For everyday purposes the general library should be sufficient, so
that one can carry out simple tasks easily. This is the position of
GSL: with it one can compute a random number, find a root or a
minimum, obtain the value of a special function, compute simple
statistics, interpolate a table of values, etc. 



Robert W. Brewer writes:
 > I've been thinking about what I would want in a grand
 > numerical library.  The things I myself would probably use a 
 > good numerical library for are some real-time speech processing
 > under Linux, and maybe as a basis for a neural networks
 > library.  Performance is important for both of those, otherwise
 > for offline use I would just use Octave or Matlab.  
 > If the Intel Signal Processing library ran under Linux that 
 > would be great, but it doesn't, and it is also a closed-source
 > library, which I'm generally against.