[Numpy-discussion] Strange behaviour with for loops + numpy arrays

[Stefan Reiterer]

Hi all!

I made some "performance" tests with numpy to compare numpy on one cpu with mpi on 4 processesors, and something appears quite strange to me:

I have the following code:

N = 2**10*4
K = 16000

x = numpy.random.randn(N).astype(numpy.float32)
x *= 10**10
print "x:", x
t1 = time.time()

#do something...
for k in xrange(K):
  x *= 0.99
   
print "altered x:", x

t = time.time() - t1
print "# loops:", K, "time needed:", t, " s "

# loops: 1000 time needed: 0.0134310722351  s
# loops: 2000 time needed: 0.028107881546  s 
# loops: 4000 time needed: 0.0367569923401  s
# loops: 8000 time needed: 0.075756072998  s 
# loops: 16000 time needed: 2.11396384239  s

So for K = 16000 it didn't need twice the amount of time as expected, it took 20 x more time!
After that jump it seem to "normalize"
# loops: 32000 time needed: 8.25508499146  s
# loops: 64000 time needed: 20.5365290642  s

First I suspected xrange was the culprit, but if I tried
k = 0
while k < K:
  x *= 0.99

it changed anything.
When I tried simply
a=0
for k in xrange(K):
  a = a+1

none of the effects above triggered, so I suspect that numpy has to be involved.
My Hardware is 2.3 GHz Intel Dual Core, 2 GB Ram and Ubuntu 10.04.
For my tests I tried it with Python 2.6, and Sage 4.6. (which uses 2.6 too)

Also changing the size of arrays or changing the computer didn't help.

Has anyone an Idea what had could happen?

Kind regards,
maldun
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