Re: GSOC 16, Improvements to sqrtm,logm and funm

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On Fri, 2016-03-11 at 11:26 +0530, Mudit Sharma wrote:
> Well, I have tried the mft toolbox, one can test it by
> the command "mft_test " , it is clear by seeing the code
> of mft_test.m that certain functions are missing from Octave
> which are called by the "mft_test" command/file and thus
> results in errors like
> error: 'superiorfloat' undefined near line 201 column 45
> I have the funm code for Octave which I pasted in the mft folder after
> which errors related to funm disappeared.
> In short octave is missing some more functionality to run mft toolbox.
> 
> Will a GSoC project be possible in this area?

Yes, but I don't think focussing on all of the details like
"superiorfloat" are necessary, which is an undocumented Matlab
function. If a slight rewriting of the tests is necessary without
altering their spirit, that's ok.

It would also be interesting to test the performance. The funm code
that Higham et al wrote is for Matlab, so it assumes that a JIT
compiler is available. We may have to do some rewriting, perhaps in
C++, in order to account for the lack of a JIT compiler in Octave.

Seeing how you have already been spending time over the past year
working on this, I encourage you to propose a formal application.

- Jordi G. H.