Adoption of the Apache Arrow memory alignment and padding?

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust
Domain
data

Research direction

Start by locating where ndarray allocates array memory and compare those paths with Apache Arrow's memory alignment, padding, and Buffer requirements. The issue names no ndarray files or tests, so first determine the relevant allocation entry points and whether zero-copy conversion is feasible; done would require a decided integration approach and corresponding implementation or design agreement.

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Description

Hi,

I'm just trying to get a sense of the level of interest from the ndarray developers regarding adopting the Apache Arrow memory layout and padding.

I have been wanting to build integrations between Arrow and ndarray for some time. Today it should be easy enough to build a zero-copy converter to ndarray types. Arrow has a tensor type and this could be converted (with the optional names for dimensions in Arrow dropped).

However, without guarantees over the memory alignment and padding assumptions you could not go back to Arrow with zero-copy. The easiest way to do this would be for ndarray to use the Arrow functions that allocate memory through the Arrow Buffer type.

Arrow is attempting to make integrations between crates easier, I noticed this issue today. This is the kind of issue we could avoid.

In general, I think that Arrow and ndarray fit together quite nicely where Arrow could provide alot of help processing data and ndarray provides all the algorithms once data is cleaned and in-memory.

I'm not very familiar with the ndarray codebase, if this sounds like a good idea could you point me to where you allocate memory etc. and any other information that might help?

Dominant language
Rust
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