Re: Pre-built binaries vs. performance

[Fis Trivial]

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hello,
>
> Fis Trivial <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> Ludovic Courtès writes:
>>
>>> Hello Guix!
>>>
>>> This post is a followup to our previous discussions on how to handle
>>> architecture-specific optimizations:
>>>
>>>   
>>> https://guix-hpc.bordeaux.inria.fr/blog/2018/01/pre-built-binaries-vs-performance/
>>>
>>> Comments welcome!
>>>
>>> Ludo’.
>>
>> Instructions support seems like just another kind of runtime dependency,
>> can we reconsider this:
>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-01/msg00166.html
>
> What do you mean?  The thread you’re referring to doesn’t discuss
> architecture-specific optimizations.
>
> Ludo’.

It's not architecture specific. But we can treat architecture as one of
the runtime dependency, right? For example, openBlas depends on SSE
instructions set, but, optionally it can depends on AVX2. (Not a perfect
example since openblas can optimize itself at runtime, but hopefully you
can understand the idea)

So, we can build packages in a generic way, and then provide optional
dependencies.
In this case, we treat SSE as default dependency and AVX2 as an optional
dependency, let users specify whether they want it or not.
AVX2 need not to be actual packages, it's just an abstraction.

It's just a thought that we can abstract architecture as part of the
dependency graph.

Thanks for you time.