[R] when can we expect Prof Tierney's compiled R?

[Luke Tierney]

It is quite likely that we will move in a direction of supporting
annotations or declarations of some sort as well--at least that is one
of the things I am planning to investigate.  I believe there is still
some room for improvement without this, but larger improvements will I
believe require some sort of annotation to allow the compiler to make
valid assumptions that can lead to optimizations.  Ideally the
compiler should be able to give some guidance on where declarations
may be useful--high performance compilers for other high level
languages have done this fairly effectively.

Vectorized operations in R are also as fast as compiled C (because
that is what they are :-)).  A compiler such as the one I'm working on
will be able to make most difference for non-vectorizable or not very
vectorizable code.  It may also be able to reduce the need for
intermediate allocations in vectorizable code, which may have other
benefits beyond just speed improvements.

Best,

luke

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, Jason Liao wrote:

> Dear Prof. Tierney,
>
> Thank for very much for replying and we all appreciate what you have
> done for the R community. Currently I have been spoiled by R. I would
> love to be 100% R.
>
> I talked to Andy Liaw yesterday about how to make R faster. Maybe we
> need to explicitly declare variables in the critical part of R code
> that intends to be compiled. This is still a much better solution than
> going to C or Fortran. The new Stata 9 has a matrix language which they
> claim to be as fast as C. It requires explicit variable declaration.
>
> Jason
>
> --- Luke Tierney <luke at stat.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>> I hope to be making some substantial progress on this over summer.
>> But I would not hold up any projects in anticipation of major R
>> changes--the current recommended strategy of first writing something
>> that is correct, profiling to find out where a performance problem is
>> if there is one, and then (maybe) optimizing by rewriting R code or
>> coding core bits in C or Fortran is likely to remain the best
>> strategy
>> for a long time to come.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> luke
>>
>> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Liaw, Andy wrote:
>>
>>> Do you mean the byte code compiler?  You can find it at:
>>> http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/~luke/R/compiler/
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>>> From: Jason Liao
>>>>
>>>> I am excited to learn that Prof. Tierney is bringing to us
>> compiled R.
>>>> I would like to learn when it will be available. This information
>> will
>>>> be useful in scheduling some of my projects. Thanks.
>>>>
>>>> Jason
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jason Liao, http://www.geocities.com/jg_liao
>>>> Dept. of Biostatistics, http://www2.umdnj.edu/bmtrxweb
>>>> University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
>>>> 683 Hoes Lane West, Piscataway' NJ 08854
>>>> phone 732-235-5429, School of Public Health office
>>>> phone 732-235-9824, Cancer Institute of New Jersey office
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
>>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Luke Tierney
>> Chair, Statistics and Actuarial Science
>> Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
>> University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
>> Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
>>     Actuarial Science
>> 241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:      luke at stat.uiowa.edu
>> Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu
>>
>
> Jason Liao, http://www.geocities.com/jg_liao
> Dept. of Biostatistics, http://www2.umdnj.edu/bmtrxweb
> University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
> 683 Hoes Lane West, Piscataway‚ NJ 08854
> phone 732-235-5429, School of Public Health office
> phone 732-235-9824, Cancer Institute of New Jersey office
>

-- 
Luke Tierney
Chair, Statistics and Actuarial Science
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
    Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:      luke at stat.uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu