Dear all, I am a maintainer of the matrix-toolkits-java
http://code.google.com/p/matrix-toolkits-java/ which is a comprehensive collection of matrix data structures, linear solvers, least squares methods, eigenvalue and singular value decompositions. This note is in regard to the commons-math library. It is clear that our projects dovetail, especially when I look at "linear" in version 2.0 of the API. It would be good if we could either complement or consolidate efforts, rather than reproduce. It would be excellent if all the functionality of matrix-toolkits-java were available as part of commons-math. There is already too much diversity and un-maintained maths code out there for Java! As a start, I'd like to discourage the use of a solid implementation for SparseReal{Vector, Matrix}... please prefer an interface approach, allowing implementations based on the Templates project:- http://www.netlib.org/templates The reason is that the storage implementation should be related to the type of data being stored. For example, there are many well-known kinds of sparse matrix that are well suited to particular kinds of calculations... consider multiplying sparse matrices that you know to be diagonal! In general, the netlib.org folk (BLAS/LAPACK) have spent a *lot* of time thinking about linear algebra and have set up unrivalled standard APIs which have been implemented right down to the architecture level. It would be a major mistake if commons-math didn't build on their good work. I believe commons-math should move to a netlib-java backend (allowing the use of machine optimised BLAS/LAPACK). http://code.google.com/p/netlib-java/ The largest problems facing MTJ are support for Sparse BLAS/LAPACK and scalability to parallel architectures which use Parallel BLAS/LAPACK. The former should be possible with some work within the current API, but I fear major API changes would be needed for the latter. I do not want the commons-math API to walk into this trap without having first considered future architectures! MTJ has a distributed package, but I am not sure if this is something that is completely future proof either. What say ye'? -- Sam -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/commons-math%2C-matrix-toolkits-java-and-consolidation-tp23537813p23537813.html Sent from the Commons - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
