Implementing FreeAlgebra using GAP?

[Simon King]

Hi!

My colleague Robert Müller pointed me to the fact that free algebras
in Sage seem to be highly inefficient:

sage: R.<a,b,c> = FreeAlgebra(GF(3),3)
sage: f = a^2+b
sage: timeit('g=f^12')
5 loops, best of 3: 1.14 s per loop

GAP does much better:

sage: RG = gap.FreeAlgebra(GF(3),'["a","b","c"]')
sage: fG = RG.1^2+RG.2
sage: timeit('g=fG^12')
5 loops, best of 3: 54.4 ms per loop

And LetterPlace algebra (I think in Singular since version 3-1-0, but
the example below was done with 3-1-1) is even faster. The
disadvantage: It requires a degree bound.

sage: singular.LIB("freegb.lib")
sage: R0 = singular.ring(0,'(a,b,c)','dp')
sage: RS = singular.makeLetterplaceRing(50)
sage: RS.set_ring()
sage: fS = singular('a(1)*a(2)+b(1)')
sage: fS.lpPower(2)
a(1)*a(2)*a(3)*a(4)+a(1)*a(2)*b(3)+b(1)*a(3)*a(4)+b(1)*b(3)
sage: timeit('g=fS.lpPower(12)')
25 loops, best of 3: 23.7 ms per loop

In the near future (probably at least until december) I will not have
the time to this myself, but it seems rather obvious that in addition
to FreeAlgebra_generic there should also be a FreeAlgebra_gap and a
FreeAlgebra_letterplace, wrapping the functionality provided by GAP
and Singular. The constructor "FreeAlgebra" would then choose the
appropriate implementation or let the user choose.

Does someone volunteer to implement it?

Best regards,
Simon