[erlang-questions] Article on Erlang in ACM Queue

[Whit Armstrong]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. FFI looks very interesting.

does Erlang make guarantees about storing data in contiguous memory?
My guess is that the binary data type was designed with that in mind.
However, do I understand correctly that floats cannot be stored in a
binary data type?

for instance:

Eshell V5.6.3  (abort with ^G)
1> X = <<1,3,9>>.
<<1,3,9>>
2> Y = <<1.0,3.0,9.0>>.
** exception error: bad argument
3>

or am I missing something obvious?

Can anyone refer me to the source file that defines binary data types?

Thanks,
Whit




On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)
<ulf.wiger@REDACTED> wrote:
> Whit Armstrong skrev:
>>
>> I'm new to Erlang. I've been considering it for a few simulation
>> projects in finance.  However, I was discouraged because the ACM
>> article suggests that Erlang has poor floating point performance.
>>
>> Are any list members using Erlang for numerical simulations?  If so,
>> do you have any advice on how to how to improve efficiency?  What
>> about using binaries to store vectors of doubles?  Are there any
>> extensions of Erlang that allow one to do that?
>
> Perhaps this might at least give you some initial intuition:
>
> High-performance Technical Computing with Erlang
> Alceste Scalas Giovanni Casu Piero Pili
> Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia
> ACM ICFP 2008 / Erlang Workshop
> September 27th, 2008
> Victoria, BC, Canada
>
> http://www.erlang.org/workshop/2008/Sess23.pdf
>
> BR,
> Ulf W
>