[Rd] OpenBLAS in everyday R?

Peter Langfelder
Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:03:41 -0000

I would be very cautious about OpenBLAS in particular...  from time to
time I get complains from users that compiled code calculations in my
WGCNA package crash or produce wrong answers with large data, and they
all come from OpenBLAS users. I am yet to reproduce any of their
crashes when using MKL and ATLAS BLAS implementations.

Just my 2 cents...

Peter

On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 12:28 PM, Kenny Bell <kmbell56 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi R-devel list,
>
> OpenBLAS is readily available for unix-likes:
>
> https://cloud.r-project.org/web/packages/gcbd/vignettes/gcbd.pdf
>
> However, my questions are:
>
> 1) Would R-devel consider using OpenBLAS for the main distribution of R for
> all platforms including Windows?
> 2) If so, would R-devel set the default multi-thread level to the number of
> (real) cores on a machine?
>
> My sense is there're a lot of wasted resources on laptops and personal
> desktops around the world that could be utilised by such a switch. I
> believe most unix-like users don't know about OpenBLAS and are
blissfully
> ignorant of the available speed gains. It seems to be quite difficult for a
> typical Windows user to get this done today.
>
> Thanks heaps,
> Kenny
>
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>
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