README

-*- mode: text -*-

This is an alpha release of cl-blapack, a wrapper around the Fortran
BLAS and LAPACK libraries for dense linear algebra.

The software relies on org.middle-angle.foreign-numeric-vector for
foreign (non-Lisp heap) storage, and CFFI.

The software generates CFFI interfaces by parsing the Fortran
reference implementation of LAPACK (available at
www.netlib.org/LAPACK).  I include files blas-cffi.lisp and
lapack-cffi.lisp which are the results of this parsing. If you want to
regenerate your own, download LAPACK, load the
org.middleangle.cl-blapack-gen system, and run

(generate-blapack-interface:generate-blapack-files #p"/path/to/LAPACK")

In general, users should not need to do this --- the supplied
interface files should work fine.  To load the interface, load
org.middleangle.cl-blapack system.

To see an example, load the org.middleangle.cl-blapack-examples
system, and execute

(blapack-examples:simple-example)

The cl-blapack library allows one to write Fortran-style code to call
BLAS and LAPACK.  There is one convenience --- scalar arguments are
automatically packaged by the system into foreign-numeric-vectors of
length 1 (see blapack-cffi-types.lisp); this may possibly be a source
of inefficiency if we are making frequent small calls to the libraries.

NOTE: As of this writing, the code is only sure to work with SBCL.  We
need to make sure that floating-point traps are turned off.  To add
support for another implementation, write the appropriate version of
with-blapack in cl-blapack.lisp (it's a NOOP for non-SBCL right now).
The code has been tested (the example runs) under recent SBCLs on both
x86 and x86-64 machines.

NOTE: We assume that BLAS/LAPACK have been compiled so that all
integers (representing indexes into arrays) are 32-bit.  This seems to
be the case currently even on 64-bit machines, but we need to monitor
this as it could change in the future.

This software is released under the modified-BSD license (no
advertising clause), see LICENSE for details.

As of 04 November 2006, this code is available at
http://middleangle.com/rif/software/cl-blapack-alpha.tar.gz

All comments, suggestions, performance reports, and assistance should
be sent to

rif
rif@mit.edu