Subject: OwlPack

From: Zoran Budimlic <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 10:23:27 -0500

Dear colleagues.

We have implemented a general purpose linear algebra library in
polymorphic, object-oriented style Java, based on the standard
Fortran LINPACK library. We call it OwlPack (Objects Within
Linear algebra PACKage).

We would like to emphasize that this library is _NOT_ meant for
use in the scientific computing (not yet, that is). Due to the highly
modular, polymorhpic, object-oriented style of implementation,
the performance lags far behind the performance of similar
projects (Dongarra and others).

This project was meant to serve as an exercise in writing
scientific programs in Java in an elegant, object-oriented
style - the style we believe _should_ be used for writing
these kinds of programs, given the sufficient compiler technologies
to ameliorate the performance problems. This library also
serves us as a working example for our Java compiler
optimizations efforts.

You can get the latest version of the package at

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~zoran/OwlPack/

You can also get the relevant papers we have published
on the topic at

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~zoran/

We would welcome and appreciate any comments you might
have on this library (using it for scientific computing, overall
design, using it for compiler related research e.t.c.).

Thank you for your help,

Zoran Budimlic
Ken Kennedy

Rice University