Matrix API support - start with formats?

[bachmeier via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 14 August 2015 at 14:57:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> I stumbled upon https://software.intel.com/en-us/node/471374 
> which gives good detail on Intel's Math Kernel Library's data 
> formats for sparse matrices.
>
> No doubt other popular linear algebra libraries have similar 
> documentation. I was thinking we could start with adding these 
> layouts to std, along with a few simple primitives 
> (construction, element/slice access, stride etc). Then, people 
> may just use those as they are or link with the linalg 
> libraries for specific computations.
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Andrei

One concern I have is the choice of MKL, which due to cost and 
license reasons, many developers will not have on all (or even 
any) of their machines.

I don't work with sparse matrices often so I do not know which 
libraries are most popular, but at a minimum I think it is 
necessary to say you can use it with a popular open source 
library. Given the importance of MKL, it would be a bad idea to 
not offer a compatible format, but it would be equally bad to 
focus on only MKL.