[sugar] SAGE on XO?

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

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elw at stderr.org wrote:
> NumPy or SciPy, with some sort of minimal support structure, could be 
> awfully handy too.  :-)
Numpy's already in the build.  There was talk of putting scipy in as well, but
this has not happened so far.

> A Geode-optimized haxx0ring-up of libs like fftw or ATLAS or BLAS might be 
> useful, too.
Numpy can do a lot of linear algebra, and scipy can do even more.  There haven't
been any requests from developers for highly tuned linear algebra libraries.

There are a few FFTs being used by activities.  Currently, Python apps doing
FFTs are using Numpy's FFTPACK, which is a decent basic C implementation.  Scipy
automatically wraps FFTW, which is known run fast on Geode.  I would be in favor
of including FFTW and Scipy in the base build, to expose faster FFTs.

Personally, I have enjoyed R and Octave (a Matlab clone), but I do not think it
is a good idea to make activities of them.  If Scipy, Matplotlib, and perhaps
RSPython were included by default, Pippy/Develop would become a Matlab-grade
numerical computing environment.  A dedicated numerics activity, built on the
same foundation, would also be welcome, if someone has some UI inspiration.

- --Ben
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