[Numpy-discussion] numexpr: optimizing pow
Tim Hochberg
tim.hochberg at cox.net
Wed Mar 8 20:50:03 EST 2006
I just checked in some changes that do aggressive optimization on the
pow operator in numexpr. Now all integral and half integral powers
between [-50 and 50] are computed using multiples and sqrt. (Empirically
50 seemed to be the closest round number to the breakeven point.)
I mention this primarily because I think it's cool. But also, it's the
kind of optimization that I don't think would be feasible in numpy
itself short of defining a whole pile of special cases, either separate
ufuncs or separate loops within a single ufunc, one for each case that
needed optimizing. Otherwise the bookkeeping overhead would overwhelm
the savings of replacing pow with multiplies.
Now all of the bookkeeping is done in Python, which makes it easy; and
done once ahead of time and translated into bytecode, which makes it
fast. The actual code that does the optimization is included below for
those of you interested enough to care, but not interested enough to
check it out of the sandbox. It could be made simpler, but I jump
through some hoops to avoid unnecessary mulitplies. For instance,
starting 'r' as 'OpNode('ones_like', [a])' would simplify things
signifigantly, but at the cost of adding an extra multiply in most cases.
That brings up an interesting idea. If 'mul' were made smarter, so that
it recognized OpNode('ones_like', [a]) and ConstantNode(1), then not
only would that speed some 'mul' cases up, it would simplify the code
for 'pow' as well. I'll have to look into that tomorrow.
Regards,
-tim
if True: # Aggressive
RANGE = 50 # Approximate break even point with pow(x,y)
# Optimize all integral and half integral powers in [-RANGE,
RANGE]
# Note: for complex numbers RANGE would be larger.
if (int(2*x) == 2*x) and (-RANGE <= abs(x) <= RANGE):
n = int(abs(x))
ishalfpower = int(abs(2*x)) % 2
r = None
p = a
mask = 1
while True:
if (n & mask):
if r is None:
r = p
else:
r = OpNode('mul', [r,p])
mask <<= 1
if mask > n:
break
p = OpNode('mul', [p,p])
if ishalfpower:
sqrta = OpNode('sqrt', [a])
if r is None:
r = sqrta
else:
r = OpNode('mul', [r, sqrta])
if r is None:
r = OpNode('ones_like', [a])
if x < 0:
r = OpNode('div', [ConstantNode(1), r])
return r
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