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

[XiaoboGu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stefan Theussl [mailto:stefan.theussl at wu.ac.at]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 8:40 PM
> To: XiaoboGu
> Cc: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Rd] Does anybody successfully built latest R on AIX 5.3?
> 
> 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)
> 
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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.

This is strange, we are hoping to improve R performance through high clock speed Power CPU(4.0 GHz above), 
Now I think we should take more considerations, RAM is also cheaper for X86 than Power :)




> 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
> >>
> >