On 03/02/2015 01:00 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:
Hi,

On 03/02/2015 12:18 PM, Dénes Tóth wrote:


On 03/02/2015 04:37 PM, Martin Maechler wrote:

On 2 March 2015 at 09:09, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
| I generally recommend that people use Rcpp, which hides a lot of the
| details.  It will generate your .Call calls for you, and generate the
| C++ code that receives them; you just need to think about the real
| problem, not the interface.  It has its own learning curve, but I
think
| it is easier than using the low-level code that you need to work
with .Call.

Thanks for that vote, and I second that.

And these days the learning is a lot flatter than it was a decade ago:

R> Rcpp::cppFunction("NumericVector doubleThis(NumericVector x) {
return(2*x); }")
R> doubleThis(c(1,2,3,21,-4))
[1]  2  4  6 42 -8
R>

That defined, compiled, loaded and run/illustrated a simple function.

Dirk

Indeed impressive,  ... and it also works with integer vectors
something also not 100% trivial when working with compiled code.

When testing that, I've went a step further:

##---- now "test":
require(microbenchmark)
i <- 1:10

Note that the relative speed of the algorithms also depends on the size
of the input vector. i + i becomes the winner for longer vectors (e.g. i
<- 1:1e6), but a proper Rcpp version is still approximately twice as
fast.

The difference in speed is probably due to the fact that R does safe
arithmetic. C or C++ do not:

   > doubleThisInt(i)
   [1]  2147483642  2147483644  2147483646          NA -2147483646
-2147483644

   > 2L * i
   [1] 2147483642 2147483644 2147483646         NA         NA         NA
   Warning message:
   In 2L * i : NAs produced by integer overflow

That was with

  i <- as.integer(2^30-4) + 1:6

Cheers,
H.


H.


Rcpp::cppFunction("NumericVector doubleThisNum(NumericVector x) {
return(2*x); }")
Rcpp::cppFunction("IntegerVector doubleThisInt(IntegerVector x) {
return(2*x); }")
i <- 1:1e6
mb <- microbenchmark::microbenchmark(doubleThisNum(i), doubleThisInt(i),
i*2, 2*i, i*2L, 2L*i, i+i, times=100)
plot(mb, log="y", notch=TRUE)


(mb <- microbenchmark(doubleThis(i), i*2, 2*i, i*2L, 2L*i, i+i,
times=2^12))
## Lynne (i7; FC 20), R Under development ... (2015-03-02 r67924):
## Unit: nanoseconds
##           expr min  lq      mean median   uq   max neval cld
##  doubleThis(i) 762 985 1319.5974   1124 1338 17831  4096   b
##          i * 2 124 151  258.4419    164  221 22224  4096  a
##          2 * i 127 154  266.4707    169  216 20213  4096  a
##         i * 2L 143 164  250.6057    181  234 16863  4096  a
##         2L * i 144 177  269.5015    193  237 16119  4096  a
##          i + i 152 183  272.6179    199  243 10434  4096  a

plot(mb, log="y", notch=TRUE)
## hmm, looks like even the simple arithm. differ slightly ...
##
## ==> zoom in:
plot(mb, log="y", notch=TRUE, ylim = c(150,300))

dev.copy(png, file="mbenchm-doubling.png")
dev.off() # [ <- why do I need this here for png ??? ]
##--> see the appended *png graphic

Those who've learnt EDA or otherwise about boxplot notches, will
know that they provide somewhat informal but robust pairwise tests on
approximate 5% level.
 From these, one *could* - possibly wrongly - conclude that
'i * 2' is significantly faster than both 'i * 2L' and also
'i + i' ---- which I find astonishing, given that  i is integer here...

Probably no reason for deep thoughts here, but if someone is
enticed, this maybe slightly interesting to read.

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich



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--
Hervé Pagès

Program in Computational Biology
Division of Public Health Sciences
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514
P.O. Box 19024
Seattle, WA 98109-1024

E-mail: hpa...@fredhutch.org
Phone:  (206) 667-5791
Fax:    (206) 667-1319

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