R devel - Oct 2017 - Debate: Shall some of Microsoft R Open Code be ported to mainstream R?

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]]

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.

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]]

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.

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]]
| 
| ______________________________________________
| R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
| https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org

[Sent offlist accidentally]

What concerns me first and foremost is that the licensure would have
to be ironclad (including for commercial use like vanilla R now) as
well as ensuring that R remains completely FLOSS. Anything ?added? to
R has to be a no-strings-attached gift to R.

Also, I would think that it would have to play nice with existing
workflows (like OpenBLAS instead of MKL) unless there is such a
benefit that it is worth breaking compatibility.

Avi

On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 6:01 PM, Kenny Bell <kmbell56 at gmail.com>
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.
>
> 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]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel