[Numpy-discussion] Need help for implementing a fast clip in numpy (was slow clip)

[Stefan van der Walt]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 08:28:14PM +0100, Francesc Altet wrote:
> El dt 09 de 01 del 2007 a les 23:19 +0900, en/na David Cournapeau va
> escriure:
> > Hi,
> > 
> >     I am finally implementing a C function to replace the current slow 
> > implementation of clip in python as promised a few weeks ago. The idea 
> > is to implement it as the following:
> > 
> > def clip(input, min, max):
> >     a   = input.copy()
> >     putmask(a, a <= min, min)
> >     putmask(a, a >= max, max)
> >     return a
> > 
> > I don't have that much experience in writing general numpy functions, so 
> > I was wondering of other people could advise me on the following points.
> > 
> 
> Sorry, but not real experience writing extensions directly in C.
> However, you may want to experiment using numexpr for doing what you
> want. It's relatively easy to extend numexpr and adding a new opcode to
> its virtual machine. I'm attaching a patch for implementing such a clip
> routine (only for floating point types, but given the example, it should
> be straightforward to add support for integers as well).
> 
> Also, you should note that using the fancy indexing of numpy seems to
> perform better than the putmask approach. Below are my figures for a
> small benchmark (also attached) for testing the performance of clip
> using several approaches:
> 
> time (putmask)--> 1.38
> time (where)--> 2.713
> time (numexpr where)--> 1.291
> time (fancy+assign)--> 0.967
> time (numexpr clip)--> 0.596
> 
> It is interesting to see there how fancy-indexing + assignation is quite
> more efficient than putmask.

Not on my machine:

time (putmask)--> 0.181
time (where)--> 0.783
time (numexpr where)--> 0.26
time (fancy+assign)--> 0.202

Cheers
Stéfan