[Axiom-developer] [Enhanced Fraction Domain] A little background

[unknown]

Changes 
http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/EnhancedFractionDomain/diff
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Bill and all,

While I haven't used nor fully digested the axiom related patches, the author 
is apparently the same individual who so helpfully suggested an improvement to 
GCL ratio arithmetic recently, which has been implemented in CVS head (2.7.0).  
Rational arithmetic is now much faster in many regards, as GCL makes use of 
more functionality in the highly optimized gmp library.  The bulk of the axiom 
patch appears to be intended to call the lisp arithmetic functions directly -- 
apparently the spad compilation process results in a number of layers between 
axiom and lisp here (not verified).  This is of course not particular to any 
implementation of lisp, it is just that one can at least expect significant 
performance advantages when GCL is the lisp.  There are still calls to 
cancelGcd -- perhaps it would be useful to bring forward the gmp library 
function GCL uses internally for this purpose.

Take care,
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