Some Rcpp benchmarks

January 22, 2012

(This article was first published on Shige's Research Blog, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

I ran the Fibonacci number example from the Rcpp package on a number of computers and operating systems. Here are the results:

A. On my main computer (Core 2 Extreme 3.06GHz, 8 GB memory) running Ubuntu 10.04 (g++ 4.4.3):

test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self

3 fibRcpp(N) 1 0.148 1.0000 0.14 0.01

1 fibR(N) 1 87.078 588.3649 87.03 0.04

2 fibRC(N) 1 91.209 616.2770 91.14 0.07

B. Same computer running Windows Vista (g++ 4.5.0):

test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self
3 fibRcpp(N) 1 0.21 1.0000 0.21 0.00
1 fibR(N) 1 92.08 438.4762 90.47 0.05
2 fibRC(N) 1 94.39 449.4762 93.13 0.03

C. On my second laptop (Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz, 4 GB memory) running Windows 7 (g++ 4.5.0):

test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self
3 fibRcpp(N) 1 0.17 1.0000 0.17 0.00
1 fibR(N) 1 73.62 433.0588 73.47 0.00
2 fibRC(N) 1 74.27 436.8824 74.20 0.03

D. On the same computer running Revolution R Enterprise 5:
test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self
2 fibRC(N) 1 72.31 1.000000 72.09 0
1 fibR(N) 1 72.99 1.009404 72.79 0

E. On my third laptop (Core 2 Duo 2.50GHz, 2 GB memory) running Mint Debian (g++ 4.6.2):

test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self

3 fibRcpp(N) 1 0.148 1.0000 0.148 0.00

1 fibR(N) 1 65.535 442.8041 65.328 0.200

2 fibRC(N) 1 65.664 443.6757 65.492 0.172

Why the faster computer performed worse, on both R and Rcpp versions?

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