[SciPy-dev] Sorting speed

[Travis Oliphant]

Try this little experiment, though to see numarray performance on 
sorting N-d arrays:

 >>> t1 = timeit.Timer('a = empty(shape=(100,100));a.sort(0)','from 
scipy import empty')
 >>> t2 = timeit.Timer('a = array(None,shape=(100,100));a.sort(0)','from 
numarray import array')
 >>> t1.repeat(3,100)
t2.rep[0.58475184440612793, 0.63138318061828613, 0.61224198341369629]
 >>> t2.repeat(3,100)
[3.3455381393432617, 3.2438080310821533, 3.2775850296020508]
 >>> import scipy.base._sort
 >>> t1.repeat(3,100)
[0.26787090301513672, 0.21700596809387207, 0.21253395080566406]


The last one changes to a type-specific sort for int32 arrays, leading 
to about a 3x speed up.   This is sorting over the first axis. 

So, it looks like even without changing the sorting, for Nd arrays 
sorting is much faster in scipy_core.   If we improve to type-specific 
sorting, then the sorting is much, much faster in scipy_core.


-Travis