add story about nalgebra

Author: lcnr

SUMMARY.md

@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
     - [😱 Status quo](./vision/status_quo.md)
         - [Array defaults](./vision/status_quo/array_default.md)
         - [Array split first method](./vision/status_quo/split_first.md)
+        - [nalgebra](./vision/status_quo/nalgebra.md)
     - [✨ Shiny future](./vision/shiny_future.md)
         - [Array defaults](./vision/shiny_future/array_default.md)
         - [Array split first method](./vision/shiny_future/split_first.md)

vision/status_quo/nalgebra.md

@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+# 😱 Status quo: nalgebra
+
+*a huge thanks to [Andreas Borgen Longva](https://github.com/Andlon) and [Sébastien Crozet](https://github.com/sebcrozet) for the help with figuring this out*
+
+[nalgebra](https://nalgebra.org/) is a linear algebra library. At the core of that library is a type `struct Matrix<T, R, C, S>` where `T` is the components scalar type, `R` and `C` represents the number of rows and columns and `S` represents the type of the buffer containing the data.
+
+Relevant for const generics are the parameters `R` and `C`. These are instantiated using one of the following types:
+```rust
+// For matrices of know size.
+pub struct Const<const R: usize>;
+// For matrices with a size only known at runtime.
+pub struct Dynamic { value: usize }
+```
+
+The authors of nalgebra then introduce a type alias
+```rust
+pub struct ArrayStorage<T, const R: usize, const C: usize>(pub [[T; R]; C]);
+/// A matrix of statically know size.
+pub type SMatrix<T, const R: usize, const C: usize> =
+    Matrix<T, Const<R>, Const<C>, ArrayStorage<T, R, C>>;
+```
+
+To deal with the lack of generic const expressions, they a trait for conversions from and to [`typenum`](https://crates.io/crates/typenum) for all `Const` up to size `127` ([source](https://github.com/dimforge/nalgebra/blob/39bb572557299a44093ea09daaff144fd6d9ea1f/src/base/dimension.rs#L273-L345)).
+
+Whenever they now need some computation using `Const<N>`, they convert it to type nums, evaluate the computation using the trait system, and then convert the result back to some `Const<M>`.
+
+## Disadvantages
+
+While this mostly works fine, there are some disadvantages.
+
+### Annoying `ToTypenum` bounds
+
+Most notably this adds a lot of unnecessary bounds, consider the following impl:
+
+```rust
+impl<T, const R1: usize, const C1: usize, const R2: usize, const C2: usize>
+    ReshapableStorage<T, Const<R1>, Const<C1>, Const<R2>, Const<C2>> for ArrayStorage<T, R1, C1>
+where
+    T: Scalar,
+    Const<R1>: ToTypenum,
+    Const<C1>: ToTypenum,
+    Const<R2>: ToTypenum,
+    Const<C2>: ToTypenum,
+    <Const<R1> as ToTypenum>::Typenum: Mul<<Const<C1> as ToTypenum>::Typenum>,
+    <Const<R2> as ToTypenum>::Typenum: Mul<
+        <Const<C2> as ToTypenum>::Typenum,
+        Output = typenum::Prod<
+            <Const<R1> as ToTypenum>::Typenum,
+            <Const<C1> as ToTypenum>::Typenum,
+        >,
+    >,
+{
+    type Output = ArrayStorage<T, R2, C2>;
+
+    fn reshape_generic(self, _: Const<R2>, _: Const<C2>) -> Self::Output {
+        unsafe {
+            let data: [[T; R2]; C2] = mem::transmute_copy(&self.0);
+            mem::forget(self.0);
+            ArrayStorage(data)
+        }
+    }
+}
+```
+
+### Cannot use associated constants
+
+It is currently also not possible to have the size of a matrix depend on associated constants:
+```rust
+trait MyDimensions {
+   const ROWS: usize;
+   const COLS: usize;
+}
+
+fn foo<Dims: MyDimensions>() {
+    // Not possible!
+    let matrix: SMatrix<f64, Dims::ROWS, Dims::COLS> = SMatrix::zeros();
+}
+```
+While this can be avoided by going to back to `typenum` and using associated types, this adds a lot of unnecessary bounds and inpacts all of the code dealing with it.
+
+## Wishlist
+
+Ideally, `Matrix` could be changed to the following:
+
+```rust
+enum Dim {
+    Const(usize),
+    Dynamic,
+}
+
+struct Matrix<T, const R: Dim, const C: Dim, S> { ... }
+
+type SMatrix<T, const R: usize, const C: usize> =
+    Matrix<T, Dim::Const(R), Dim::Const(C), ArrayStorage<T, R, C>>;
+```
+
+For this to work well there have a bunch of requirements for const generics:
+
+### User-defined types as const parameter types
+
+We have to be able to use `Dim` as a const param type
+
+### Consider injective expressions to bind generic params
+
+With this change, `nalgebra` needs impls like the following
+
+```rust
+impl<T, const R: usize, const C: usize> for SMatrix<T, R, C> {
+    // ...
+}
+```
+
+For this impl to bind `R` and `C`, the expression `Dim::Const(N)` has to bind `N`.
+This is sound as constructors are injective. It seems very desirable to at least
+enable this for expressions using constructors.
+
+### Merge partial impls to be exhaustive
+
+By adding one trait impl impl for `Dim::Dynamic` and one for `Dim::Const(N)`, it should be enough to consider that trait to be implemented for all `Dim`.
+
+Ideally, the compiler should figure this out by itself, or it can be emulated using specialization by manually adding an impl for all `Dim` which always gets overridden.
+
+### Generic const expressions
+
+For example when computing the [Kronecker product](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronecker_product) which has the following simplified signature:
+```rust
+pub fn kronecker<T, const R1: Dim, const C1: Dim, const R2: Dim, const C2: Dim>(
+    lhs: &Matrix<T, R1, C2>,
+    rhs: &Matrix<T, R2, C2>,
+) -> Matrix<T, R1 * R2, C1 * C2> {
+    ...
+}
+```
+
+For this generic const expressions have to be supported.
+
+### const Trait implementations
+
+For `R1 * R2` to work we need const trait impls, otherwise this
+can be written using `mul_dim(R1, R2)` or something.