[Rd] Does anybody successfully built latest R on AIX 5.3?

[Stefan Theussl]

On 06/08/2011 02:02 PM, XiaoboGu wrote:
> Hi Stefan,
> 	Thanks for replying!
>
> 	I have just managed to installed gcc 4.2.4.2 on AIX this evening, and will try to install gfortran tomorrow, there are a few more questions
>    
great.
> 1. Are you running R 2.13.0
>    
Currently we are running 2.12.0 (works with both GNU and IBM compilers). 
I was not able to compile 2.13 with GNU compilers yet, IBM compilers 
work though (are preferable anyway, since performance is higher):

R version 2.13.0 Patched (2011-06-08 r56086)
Copyright (C) 2011 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
ISBN 3-900051-07-0
Platform: powerpc-ibm-aix6.1.0.0 (64-bit)

R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.

R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
Type 'contributors()' for more information and
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Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
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 > sessionInfo()
R version 2.13.0 Patched (2011-06-08 r56086)
Platform: powerpc-ibm-aix6.1.0.0 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] EN_US.UTF-8 EN_US.UTF-8 C C EN_US.UTF-8 EN_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
 >

However recommended package Matrix gives an error upon loading.
> 2. Can you share all the environment variables we have to set before running the configure script.
>    
See the manual and 
https://r-forge.r-project.org/scm/viewvc.php/install_scripts/install_R_AIX.sh?view=markup&root=aix 

You may download this script (and patches), modify the paths 
accordingly, run it (e.g., ./install_R_AIX.sh --ibm for 2.13) and R 
should build fine.
There are a couple of notes and patches provided in the R/AIX repository 
on R-Forge (e.g., how to get IBM BLAS linked etc., missing third-party 
libs installed, etc.).

> 3. Can you share the full command line of configure script.
>    
see above.
> 4. According to your experience, is there a huge performance lift compared to X86 CPUS, what's the clock speed of you Power CPU?
>    
No there isn't. One can use the IBM BLAS library (ESSL), then one will 
observe a significant speedup for linear algebra tasks. Note however, 
ESSL does not incorporate the full BLAS specification (thus the patch). 
In general, R  runs slower on the power architecture than on x86.
We have a Power 6 8core CPU @ 3.5 GHz. Actually, we use our system 
mainly for memory-demanding applications (<=128GB RAM).

Best,
st
>
> Regards,
>
> Xiaobo Gu
>
>
>    
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Stefan Theussl [mailto:stefan.theussl at wu.ac.at]
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 7:07 PM
>> To: guxiaobo1982 at gmail.com
>> Cc: r-devel at r-project.org
>> Subject: Re: [Rd] Does anybody successfully built latest R on AIX 5.3?
>>
>> We successfully built R on AIX 6.1 but the following instructions should also work for 5.3.
>>
>> We mainly used the software from OSS4AIX but also from the "AIX Toolbox for Linux
>> Applications" obtainable directly from IBM. Attached you'll find our list of installed rpms.
>> This and the instructions provided in the "R Installation and Administration" manual should
>> be all you need to build R on AIX systems.
>>
>> hth,
>> st
>>      
>