Re: RFC: building numpy against OpenBLAS.

[Eric Bavier]

----- Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> wrote:
> python-numpy currently depends on Atlas, which means that it cannot be
> substituted with a binary built elsewhere.  OpenBLAS is an alternative
> to Atlas and the binary can be used on all supported CPUs at runtime.
> This makes it possible for us to make numpy substitutable.
[...]
> Anyway, I just wanted to post this here to ask for opinions.  Maybe this
> is a bad idea.  (In my case it makes sense not to use Atlas, because the
> compile-time tuning is useless when a shared store is used and clients
> use Atlas on machines other than the build host.)
> 

I would very much like to see OpenBLAS substituted for atlas whereever 
possible.  The runtime performance of OpenBLAS is quite a bit better than 
ATLAS.  I've seen e.g. OpenBLAS to be roughly 20% faster than ATLAS for GEMM 
calls on Sandybridge platforms.

`~Eric