[Rd] OpenBLAS in everyday R?

Kenny Bell
Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:41:43 -0000

It seems like many of the multi-threaded BLASes have some sort of
fundamental problem preventing use in the way Juan suggests:

 - Dirk's vignette states that ATLAS "fixes the number of cores used at
compile-time and cannot vary this setting at run-time", so any
user-friendly implementation for R would have to compile ATLAS for 1-16
threads to allow the user to switch at run-time. This might dramatically
affect install times.

 - MKL seems like it's been outright rejected in the past based on not
being "free-enough".

 - OpenBLAS causes crashes.

Has anyone tried ExBLAS for use with R?

On Sun, Dec 17, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Peter Langfelder <
peter.langfelder at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
> >         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel