On Aug 25, 2009, at 12:08 PM, Kurt Smith wrote: > On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Sebastien > Binet<[email protected]> wrote: >> hi there, >> >> IIRC there was a cython oriented BoF at last week's scipy conference. >> >> anything interesting ? >> (lame attempt at having a good soul summarizing or even just >> outlining what >> happened for the poor guys from the other side of the big pond) > > I thought so, although I was privy to just a part of the conversation. > Dag or others, feel free to fill in parts that I'm missing.
Thanks for the summary. I'll be looking forward to Dag's take on all this too. > Rough outline of BoF topics (more of a brain-dump, actually): > > Memoryviews & Memoryviewslices (see: http://wiki.cython.org/ > enhancements/array) > Dag had an extended conversation with the attendees about the > semantics of these arrays -- when copying should occur, when views > should be taken, etc. Good to hear that's getting nailed down, and by those who will actually be using them. > SIMD operations on Cython arrays / Memoryviews > My impression was that there was general support for this feature, > although this isn't surprising since we were at a numerical computing > conference ;-) Dag discussed a few possibilities for how it would > work, noting that this particular aspect of Cython arrays would need a > vote & acceptance in the Cython community and core-devs. A numexpr > backend is one possibility. Others brought up the possibility of > incoporating OpenMP directives in Cython somehow. Another thread in > this topic was support for generalized ufuncs in Cython (see: > http://projects.scipy.org/numpy/browser/trunk/doc/neps/generalized- > ufuncs.rst), > which very easily extend to SIMD operations. Dag, you'll have to fill > in here. We'll see how it plays out, but I think well-thought out, natively supported arrays like this are a killer feature (and I don't usually depart from focusing on Cython as mostly an optimizing Python compiler). > fwrap: > A few of us off in the corner discussed fwrap and what remains to > be done to get the first release out. The fellas I spoke to work on > Clawpack at the U-Washington, and they're very interested in getting > callbacks working well. They even offered to pitch in. So that's > encouraging. Actually, I've been meaning to ask you if you thought fwrap would be a good fit for the Clawpack project--glad to see you've already met up. > Topics listed but not discussed at the BoF (but certainly worth > mentioning ;-): > C++ & Cython integration -- Damian Eads has a nice C++ Container > <-> Python container tool called Convert-xy (see: > http://code.google.com/p/convert-xy/). If integrated in Cython, it > could ease the use of STL containers in Cython. Hmm.. That could be useful. > Weave-like support in Cython -- Fernando Perez (not at the BoF) > suggested that Cython could assume the same functionality of > scipy.weave (see: http://www.scipy.org/Weave), since scipy.weave is > poorly documented and could use more maintenance than it is currently > getting. I'm personally very interested in this -- it seems that > there is much overlap between scipy.weave and the combination of > pyximport & the pure-python mode of Cython. It seems that with a bit > of work from an interested user and some guidance from yours truly, we > could improve pyximport & Cython's pure-python mode to incorporate the > good stuff from scipy.weave, but better ;-) I intend to write-up a > CEP with my thoughts sometime in the near future. More comments on this later. - Robert _______________________________________________ Cython-dev mailing list [email protected] http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/cython-dev
