arrays of floating point numbers / linear algebra operations into the DB

From: Enrico Sirola <enrico(dot)sirola(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: "pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org General" <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: arrays of floating point numbers / linear algebra operations into the DB
Date: 2008-02-01 10:31:37
Message-ID: 99409BD7-09FD-43BC-B66E-278E97AC5303@gmail.com
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Hello,
I'd like to perform linear algebra operations on float4/8 arrays.
These tasks are tipically carried on using ad hoc optimized libraries
(e.g. BLAS). In order to do this, I studied a bit how arrays are
stored internally by the DB: from what I understood, arrays are
basically a vector of Datum, and floating point numbers are stored by
reference into Datums. At a first glance, this seem to close the
discussion because in order to perform fast linear algebra operations,
you need to store array items in consecutive memory cells.
What are the alternatives? Create a new specialized data type for
floating point vectors?
Basically, the use-case is to be able to rescale, add and multiply
(element-by-element)
vectors.

Thanks for your help,
e.

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