Column-wise data storage for matrices in C, any advantage(s)?

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <1991Feb1.214342.4982 at portia.Stanford.EDU>
fangchin at elaine46.stanford.edu (Chin Fang) writes:

   as is well know among numerical computing people that matrix algorithms 
   have to be "gaxpy" (defined below) rich to gain high performance:

Well, talk to the Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
at the University of Illinois, for one (Kuck, Lawrie, Padua, et al).
Or Ken Kennedy at Rice.  Or Ron Cytron at IBM-Yorktown Heights.  They
would probably dispute this "well known" statement.

   gaxpy: given x in Rn, y in Rn and A in Rmxn, the following algorithm
          computes z=y+Ax.

Where I came from, the convention was that an m*n matrix had m rows
and n columns, and if x is in Rn and A is in Rm*n, then A*x is in Rm.
In that case, "z=y+Ax" above makes no sense.  (Also, I've seen the
problem referred to as SAXPY, for the single-precision BLAS routine.)

   Now, note that this algorithm [omitted] requires most rapid changes
   in indexing occurring in COLUMNS, not rows!

Then don't use THIS algorithm; use ANOTHER algorithm.  Carefully
distinguish "a problem" from "an algorithm".  The problem is a goal;
the algorithm is one means to that end.  You're trying to solve a
problem; any particular algorithm is simply one approach to the
problem, to be discarded when conditions change.  The first algorithm
proposed is suited for FORTRAN; devise one more suited for C.

Just optimizing matrix multiply for one given machine is hard.  For a
thorough job, I would suppose you should consider vector register
length, number of registers, total cache size, cache line length, page
size, memory latency, and function unit overlap, just for starters.
No doubt there are other factors I haven't thought of.

A very-high-performance supercomputer SAXPY should be in a hand-tuned
library; the average expert is not familiar enough with the problem to
code an excellent solution.

--
Tim McDaniel                 Applied Dynamics Int'l.; Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Work phone: +1 313 973 1300                        Home phone: +1 313 677 4386
Internet: mcdaniel at adi.com                UUCP: {uunet,sharkey}!amara!mcdaniel