[Rd] Debate: Shall some of Microsoft R Open Code be ported to mainstream R?

[Ista Zahn]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 11:09 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
>
> On 29 October 2017 at 22:01, Kenny Bell wrote:
> | User here: incorporating Intel's MKL, as MRO does, would be a very welcome
> | addition.
> |
> | I was an MRO user before and it improved my experience with medium data
> | immensely.
> |
> | They did, however, leave behind bugs here and there, especially related to
> | development with Rcpp, so I switched back to vanilla R.
>
> With all due respect: You may miss something. MKL has always worked with 'Base R'.
>
> As a point of reference and comparison, I set up a benchmarking and
> comparison package _well over half a decade ago_ and while it never get fully
> finished to the point of a submitted paper the vignette still stands---and
> demonstrates that _dropping in MKL is a one-line operation_.
>
> And always has been.  There may have been some license arbitrage: Intel was
> an early investor in Revo, so MKL was pushed hard.  With GotoBLAS and later
> OpenBLAS I cared less, but IIRC the license of MKL is a little simpler for
> "mere use" now.
>
> See  https://cloud.r-project.org/web/packages/gcbd/vignettes/gcbd.pdf  for more.

FWIW, I've been using openBlas for years now, based on this and other
benchmarks. It provides performance comparable to MKL while being
really free.

Best,
Ista

>
> Hth,  Dirk
>
> |
> | On Mon, Oct 30, 2017, 9:42 AM Juan Telleria <jtelleriar at gmail.com> wrote:
> |
> | > Dear R Developers,
> | >
> | > First of all, I would like to thank you Jeroen Ooms for taking the binary
> | > Window Builds from Duncan. I firmly believe that the R Community will
> | > benefit a lot from his work.
> | >
> | > However, the debate I would like to open is about if some of Microsoft R
> | > Open Code shall be ported from R Open to Mainstream R.
> | >
> | > There are some beneficts in R Open such as multithreaded performance:
> | > https://mran.microsoft.com/documents/rro/multithread/
> | >
> | > Maybe, the R Consortium, and in particular, Microsoft R Team, could
> | > collaborate, if appropriate, in such duty.
> | >
> | > Thank you,
> | > Juan Telleria
> | >
> | >         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> | >
> | > ______________________________________________
> | > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> | > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> | >
> |
> |       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> |
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> --
> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org
>
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