Function call overhead benchmarks with MATLAB, Octave, Python, Cython and C
Programming Languages
2012-02-14 v1 Mathematical Software
Numerical Analysis
Abstract
We consider the overhead of function calls in the programming languages MATLAB/Octave, Python, Cython and C. In many applications a function has to be called very often inside a loop. One such application in numerical analysis is the finite element method where integrals have to be computed on each element in a loop. The called functions can often be evaluated efficiently but the function call itself may be time-consuming. We present a benchmark whose goal is to identify and quantify optimization potentials with respect to time consumption caused by function calls in the mentioned programming languages.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1202.2736,
title = {Function call overhead benchmarks with MATLAB, Octave, Python, Cython and C},
author = {André Gaul},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.2736},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
The benchmark's source code is available under GPL3 at https://bitbucket.org/andrenarchy/funcall