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floatingspeed

Various tests of numerical performance, comparing languages, compilers, flags, etc.

Alex Barnett 2016--2026

Contributions by:
Jeremy Magland
Libin Lu
many others

Contents

  • arraysinglethread: compare C/C++/Fortran speeds for complex and real double-precision arithmetic, on a 1D array.
  • lap3dkernel: compare various languages speed in a multithreaded implementation of direct summation of the 1/r kernel.

Open in a containerized development environment using vscode

You can use Visual Studio Code to open a containerized development environment. This creates a Docker container with all of the compilers and tools pre-installed, including Fortran, Python, Octave, g++, and Julia. You can then run the tests and seamlessly edit the code all within this environment, and the source files are automatically sync'd with the host environment.

Note: MATLAB is not installed within the development container.

Prerequisites

Instructions

# Clone this repo
git clone [repo-url] floatingspeed
cd floatingspeed

### Open in Visual Studio Code
code .

Install the Remote-Containers vscode extension (if not already installed)

In the lower-left corner of the vscode window you should see a little green icon. Click that and select "Reopen in Container"

Now the container will be built on your system (may take several minutes). And then your project will appear -- inside the development environment container.

If you are curious, the Docker recipe for installing all the compilers can be found at .devcontainer/Dockerfile

You can now either run the tests from the built-in vscode terminal, or you can run them using the built-in tasks for this project.

To run a task, launch the vscode command menu (Ctrl+Shift+P) and search for "Run Task" and press enter. Then select one of the two tasks that appear (e.g., "Run arraysinglethread test") and press enter. Then enter again to continue. A new vscode terminal will open and run your test.

If you are curious, the tasks are configured at .vscode/tasks.json.

Summary of this repo produced by codex CLI using ChatGPT 5.2

I'm preparing a concise high-level explanation covering the two main benchmarks—arraysinglethread testing complex arithmetic in a single thread, and lap3dkernel performing 3D 1/r sums across languages with SIMD and OpenMP. I'll describe key files, script entry points, output locations, and note VCL inclusion, while briefly addressing the non-critical display errors. I'll also ─ Worked for 1m 11s ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

• Here’s the shape of the repo and what each part does, based on the files in / home/alex/numerics/floatingspeed:

  1. arraysinglethread/ — single‑core array arithmetic
  • Purpose: compare real vs complex arithmetic performance in C, C++, and Fortran on large 1D arrays, mostly memory‑bound. See arraysinglethread/ README.
  • Runner script: arraysinglethread/do_complextimings.sh compiles and runs three binaries (Fortran, C++ with C complex, C++ with std::complex). You tweak FLAGS, GF, and GXX here.
  • C++ test: arraysinglethread/complexmulttiming.cpp allocates large arrays (default M=1e8), fills with fixed random data, and times multiply‑add loops across several representations:
    • real doubles
    • “by hand” complex (separate real/imag arrays and interleaved)
    • C double complex (if USE_C_TYPE_COMPLEX)
    • C++ std::complex (if USE_CPP_TYPE_COMPLEX)
  • Fortran test: arraysinglethread/complexmulttiming.f does the same for real8 and complex16.
  • Timing utility: arraysinglethread/utils.h + arraysinglethread/utils.cpp provide a simple CNTime timer.
  • Results: arraysinglethread/results/*.txt are saved benchmark outputs for various machines/flags.
  1. lap3dkernel/ — multithreaded 3D 1/r kernel

  • Purpose: benchmark dense direct N‑body summation (1/r kernel) from ns=1e4 sources to nt=1e4 targets. See lap3dkernel/README.

  • Runner script: lap3dkernel/run_all_tests.sh compiles/runs C++ SIMD + OpenMP, Fortran + OpenMP, Julia, Python+Numba, MATLAB, Octave. It expects those toolchains to be installed. What the benchmarks actually measure

  • arraysinglethread: raw array traversal + multiply‑add with accumulation; highlights compiler flags and complex number representation overhead.

  • lap3dkernel: “source‑target pairs per second” for 3D 1/r kernel; highlights threading, SIMD, and compiler differences across languages.

If you want, tell me which part you want to go deeper on (e.g., “walk through the C++ SIMD kernel,” “what flags matter most,” or “how to run just one benchmark”), and I’ll zoom in.