[raphaelrk]

Speaking of python performance, I recently benchmarked "numpy vs js" matrix multiplication performance, and was surprised to find js significantly outperforming numpy. For multiplying two 512x512 matrices:

    python
      numpy:               ~3.30ms
      numpy with numba:    ~2.90ms

    node
      tfjs:                ~1.00ms
      gpu.js:              ~4.00ms
      ndarray:           ~118.00ms
      vanilla loop:      ~138.00ms
      mathjs:           ~1876.00ms

    browser
      tfjs webgpu:          ~.16ms
      tfjs webgl:           ~.76ms
      tfjs wasm:           ~2.51ms
      gpu.js:              ~6.00ms
      tfjs cpu:          ~244.65ms
      mathjs:           ~3469.00ms

    c
      accelerate.h:         ~.06ms

Source here: https://github.com/raphaelrk/matrix-mul-test

[netheril96]

Numpy runs on CPU. Tfjs runs on GPU. Not a fair comparison.

[raphaelrk]

You're right, it's not a fair comparison -- I think it's still interesting though, since numpy is the standard people would reach for, which made me think it would be the fastest / use the GPU. I expect a python library that uses the GPU would be just as fast as the others.

[dhasso]

For that, you can use cupy[0], PyTorch[1] or Tensorflow[2]. They all mimic the numpy's API with the possibility to use your GPU.

[0] https://cupy.dev/ [1] https://pytorch.org/ [2] https://www.tensorflow.org/

[psyklic]

It adds a great deal of complexity (and often user frustration) for a Python package to support both CPU and GPGPU.

[qeternity]

People don’t reach for numpy because it’s the absolute fastest…

[raphaelrk]

What I meant was I expected numpy to be faster than the js libraries I was testing, simply because people use it so much more, for real "scientific computing" work. And indeed it is very fast given it only uses the CPU, but that still leaves its matrix multiplication as ~100x slower than what my mac is capable of.

[sampo]

TensorFlow.js matrices are immutable, which puts more restrictions on your programming style that standard Numpy. You cat get immutable, GPU-enhanced matrices for Python, too.