Advice regarding multiprocessing module

[Jean-Michel Pichavant]

----- Original Message ----- 

> Dear all,

> I need some advice regarding use of the multiprocessing module.
> Following is the scenario:

> * I am running gradient descent to estimate parameters of a pairwise
> grid CRF (or a grid based graphical model). There are 106 data
> points. Each data point can be analyzed in parallel.
> * To calculate gradient for each data point, I need to perform
> approximate inference since this is a loopy model. I am using Gibbs
> sampling.
> * My grid is 9x9 so there are 81 variables that I am sampling in one
> sweep of Gibbs sampling. I perform 1000 iterations of Gibbs
> sampling.
> * My laptop has quad-core Intel i5 processor, so I thought using
> multiprocessing module I can parallelize my code (basically
> calculate gradient in parallel on multiple cores simultaneously).
> * I did not use the multi-threading library because of GIL issues,
> GIL does not allow multiple threads to run at a time.
> * As a result I end up creating a process for each data point
> (instead of a thread that I would ideally like to do, so as to avoid
> process creation overhead).
> * I am using basic NumPy array functionalities.

> Previously I was running this code in MATLAB. It runs quite faster,
> one iteration of gradient descent takes around 14 sec in MATLAB
> using parfor loop (parallel loop - data points is analyzed within
> parallel loop). However same program takes almost 215 sec in Python.

> I am quite amazed at the slowness of multiprocessing module. Is this
> because of process creation overhead for each data point?

> Please keep my email in the replies as I am not a member of this
> mailing list.

> Thanks,
> Abhinav

Hi,

Can you post some code, especially the part where you're create/running the processes ? If it's not too big, the process function as well.

Either multiprocess is slow like you stated, or you did something wrong.

Alternatively, if posting code is an issue, you can profile your python code, it's very easy and effective at finding which the code is slowing down everyone.
http://docs.python.org/2/library/profile.html

Cheers,

JM


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