[vsipl++] vsipl++ GPL version

[Brooks Moses]

Piotr,

Piotr Gawron wrote, at 12/8/2008 11:58 AM:
> I'm interesting in development of quantum computation simulation
> library in vsipl++. Due to academic nature of this project I'm
> interested in GPL version of your library.
> 
> I would like to know if GPL version of your library fully supports
> Cell Broadband Engine architecture.

Thank you for your interest in Sourcery VSIPL++!

At this point in time, Sourcery VSIPL++ for Cell/B.E. requires the Cell
Math Library to provide the required backend for full support of the
Cell/B.E. architecture.  The Cell Math Library is only available in a
commercial license; contact sales at codesourcery.com for details on that.
However, since the VSIPL++ API (and the Sourcery VSIPL++ implementation
of it) are portable across platforms, you could of course use Sourcery
VSIPL++ and CML on the Cell/B.E., and still distribute your application
source code for use on other platforms where we do have a pure-GPL
solution.

Also, I believe our sales department has been considering offering
low-cost academic licensing for the full Sourcery VSIPL++ and Cell Math
Library package.  If you're interested in that, please send information
about your project and your needs to sales at codesourcery.com.

Alternately, you can compile the GPL version of Sourcery VSIPL++ to use
the FFTW library as a backend for FFT computations.  This will provide
access to the Cell/B.E. support included in version 3.2 of FFTW, and
will run other computations on the PPUs.  Although this isn't full
support, it may be useful for you depending on the particular needs of
your computations.  (I should also note the caveat that our most recent
GPL release of Sourcery VSIPL++ was only tested against FFTW 3.1;
although we don't expect any problems with compiling it against FFTW
3.2, we obviously can't guarantee that it works perfectly.)

Thanks,
- Brooks