I am baffled by this
def main():
for i in xrange(2560000):
a = [0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
main()
$ time python test.py
real 0m0.793s
Let's now see with numpy:
import numpy
def main():
for i in xrange(2560000):
a = numpy.array([0.0, 0.0, 0.0])
main()
$ time python test.py
real 0m39.338s
Holy CPU cycles batman!
Using numpy.zeros(3) improves, but still not enough IMHO
$ time python test.py
real 0m5.610s
user 0m5.449s
sys 0m0.070s
numpy.version.version = '1.5.1'
If you are wondering if the list creation is skipped for optimization in the first example, it is not:
5 19 LOAD_CONST 2 (0.0)
22 LOAD_CONST 2 (0.0)
25 LOAD_CONST 2 (0.0)
28 BUILD_LIST 3
31 STORE_FAST 1 (a)
解决方案
Numpy is optimised for large amounts of data. Give it a tiny 3 length array and, unsurprisingly, it performs poorly.
Consider a separate test
import timeit
reps = 100
pythonTest = timeit.Timer('a = [0.] * 1000000')
numpyTest = timeit.Timer('a = numpy.zeros(1000000)', setup='import numpy')
uninitialised = timeit.Timer('a = numpy.empty(1000000)', setup='import numpy')
# empty simply allocates the memory. Thus the initial contents of the array
# is random noise
print 'python list:', pythonTest.timeit(reps), 'seconds'
print 'numpy array:', numpyTest.timeit(reps), 'seconds'
print 'uninitialised array:', uninitialised.timeit(reps), 'seconds'
And the output is
python list: 1.22042918205 seconds
numpy array: 1.05412316322 seconds
uninitialised array: 0.0016028881073 seconds
It would seem that it is the zeroing of the array that is taking all the time for numpy. So unless you need the array to be initialised then try using empty.