[SciPy-user] CLAPACK vs. LAPACK?

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> Renaming clapack to atlas seems like a no-brainer to me, but I don't
    >> have to worry much about backward compatibility.

    Pearu> Sorry, I don't understand what do you mean by no-brainer within
    Pearu> this context. English is not my first language and sometimes I
    Pearu> don't get its slang...

It means it seems obvious to me that a module related to atlas should be
named "atlas", not "clapack".  In the absence of any other constraints (like
backward compatibility issues) I'd change it immediately.

This is a bit off-topic, but you might find Wayne Magnuson's idioms website
useful:

    http://home.t-online.de/home/toni.goeller/idiom_wm/

He doesn't have "no brainer".  He is fairly responsive.  I'll suggest he add
it.

    >> At the moment I don't have Atlas installed.  I'm just using stock
    >> lapack and blas.  I guess it's time to revisit building atlas.

    Pearu> Using atlas instead of stock lapack/blas can give upto 10 times
    Pearu> speed up for linalg functions. But if that is not important, then
    Pearu> one needs not to build atlas, linalg still has the same
    Pearu> functionality based on Fortran lapack.

Speed isn't an issue for me.  All I'm worried about is getting SciPy and
friends built. ;-)  Still, I have an atlas build going now.  Should be
finished in about 10 hours...

Skip