Re: [Gretl-devel] memory with many discrete variables in large (panel) dataset
On Wed, 1 Jan 2014, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Nevertheless, given the fact that many of the variables in there are
discrete integer-valued which could be saved as a signed single byte,
and that (I think) I know that gretl stores every variable as
double-precision 8-byte numbers, there are huge potential memory savings
and speed improvements. Maybe that's something to think about for the
longer term.
This is an issue Allin and I have been discussing since the Toruń
conference. Eventually we dropped the idea, because to properly support
series which contain anything but doubles we'd have to rewrite pretty much
everything internally (however, examining the issue did lead us to a
substantial rewrite of the internals, which made things more efficient and
streamlined --- see the commits made around the end of July 2011 if you're
curious).
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Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
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