[Rd] R Installation Manual - ATLAS BLAS guidance that is not in the current version

[Adler, Avraham]

I apologize for the late response, but I missed Professor Ripley's reply. For what it is worth, I have successfully compiled a 32-bit ATLAS-based BLAS for Windows for the Core-i7 that passes the make checks and library tools tests (which may be found at <http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/R/CRAN/bin/windows/contrib/ATLAS/C2i7/> for those interested in either testing or using it). Using this BLAS, I find a speedup of around 500% for matrix multiplications of 1000x1000 dense matrices. Unfortunately, in the environment in which I operate, I am currently constrained to a 32-bit operating system. If and when the transition is made to 64bit, I will gladly use  Professor Nakama's versions, although none of them are optimized for Core i7 (Sandy Bridge or otherwise) CPUs. 

As the necessity to remove the xerbla remains, and implementing it does allow for the proper compilation of R under Windows, I will just have to archive that information myself and use it the next time I need to update the BLAS. I am thankful that the Windows-based MAKEFILE still allows for the compilation of Rblas.dll linking to an ATLAS-based BLAS, and although I regret that the manuals will no longer contain that information, I certainly defer to the expertise and experience of those much more knowledgeable than I in matters programming, compilation, and R.

Thank you,

Avraham Adler