[Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

[David MacQuigg]

I got scipy.weave working in my Mandelbrot demo in Python2.5 under Cygwin, and the speed improvement is comparable to my hand-coded <Pyton.h> extension module.

    1a) Python speed = 678 points/sec
    1b) C speed      = 115200 points/sec     169X
    2a) Python speed = 721 points/sec
    2b) C      speed = 126400 points/sec     175X

See http://ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/ece175/projects/mandelbrots/mandel_weave.py for the complete program, including both the Python and C-coded versions of the getpts function.  It should run now in any Python setup with the required packages (numpy and weave).

As Rob pointed out, this eliminates all the <Python.h> interface functions, the need to build a shared library for every little test, and the clutter in my site-packages directory from all these tests.  Now, I can just tell the students "write your own C code, and put it in the stub function in this Python module."

The stub function runs 10X faster than the C speed above, so we can be confident the Python overhead is negligible.
 

At 09:30 PM 3/13/2008 -0700, Rob Malouf wrote:

>Ugh!  I'm afraid I don't use windows, so I can't offer any advice.  I  
>do know that compiling scipy wasn't that difficult under linux or mac  
>os x, so it shouldn't be too bad under cygwin either.

Weave and Numpy compiled without any snags, and that is all I need for now.

>  There are few  
>extra libraries you need, but you can probably find binaries for them  
>out there somewhere.  In fact, I'm surprised there isn't a cygwin  
>binary for scipy... if you get it working maybe you should post it  
>somewhere!

Or at least some instructions that are more clear on building such a binary.

Many thanks for all the help.

-- Dave


At 07:24 PM 3/11/2008 -0700, Rob Malouf wrote:

>On Mar 11, 2008, at 5:11 PM, David MacQuigg wrote:
>>It would make a nice improvement in this Mandelbrot demo if you  
>>could show me a way to significantly improve the speed of the Python  
>>I already have, perhaps avoiding the need for C.
>
>Actually, I don't see a clean way to vectorize that inner loop, so  
>maybe numpy isn't a good fit here.  Which means weave is.
>
>First, running the program as-is, I get:
>
>    1a) Python speed = 776 points/sec
>    1b) C speed      = 103200 points/sec
>    2a) Python speed = 833 points/sec
>    2b) C      speed = 108600 points/sec
>
>With this added to the beginning of the program to load and invoke  
>psyco:
>
>        import psyco
>        psyco.full()
>
>I get:
>
>    1a) Python speed = 2700 points/sec
>    1b) C speed      = 101600 points/sec
>    2a) Python speed = 2800 points/sec
>    2b) C      speed = 110100 points/sec
>
>Or, instead, replacing your getpts with the weave-d version:
>
>                from numpy import zeros
>                from scipy import weave
>                ...
>    vals = zeros(100,int)
>
>    code = r"""
>        double cx = cx0 - dx;
>        for (int p=0; p<100; p++) {
>            double zx = 0.0;
>            double zy = 0.0;
>            int i;
>            cx += dx;
>            for (i=0; i<999; i++) {
>                double zx2 = zx*zx;
>                double zy2 = zy*zy;
>                if ((zx2 + zy2) > 4.0) break;
>                zy = 2*zx*zy + cy0;
>                zx = zx2 - zy2 + cx;
>            }
>            vals[p] = i;
>        }
>    """
>    weave.inline(code,['cx0','cy0','dx','vals'])
>
>I get:
>
>    1a) Python speed = 102200 points/sec
>    1b) C speed      = 103300 points/sec
>    2a) Python speed = 108400 points/sec
>    2b) C      speed = 110700 points/sec
>
>Not bad! There's probably a more pythonic way to write that, but  
>this'll do.  And after all, this is a realistic situation: you've got  
>the inner loop of a program written in C, but you'd rather write all  
>the supporting code around it in something like Python.  And note that  
>weave automatically compiles and links (if necessary) and then loads  
>the C part when you run mandel.py.  You (or your students) don't need  
>to remember where the python headers are or how to build a shared  
>library on whatever platform they're using.
>
>---
>Rob Malouf <rmalouf at mail.sdsu.edu>
>Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle Eastern Languages
>San Diego State University