R help - Sep 2010 - Which language is faster for numerical computation?

Dear all, R offers integration mechanism with different programming
languages like C, C++, Fortran, .NET etc. Therefore I am curious on,
for heavy numerical computation which language is the fastest? Is
there any study? I specially want to know because, if there is some
study saying that C is the fastest language for numerical computation
then I would change some of my R code into C.

Thanks for your time.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 09/09/10 12:26, Christofer Bogaso wrote:
> Dear all, R offers integration mechanism with different programming
> languages like C, C++, Fortran, .NET etc. Therefore I am curious on,
> for heavy numerical computation which language is the fastest? Is
> there any study? I specially want to know because, if there is some
> study saying that C is the fastest language for numerical computation
> then I would change some of my R code into C.
As far as I am aware, the two choices are C and Fortran - where it
depends on the calculations, which one is faster.

Cheers,

Rainer
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

- -- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Natural Sciences Building
Office Suite 2039
Stellenbosch University
Main Campus, Merriman Avenue
Stellenbosch
South Africa

Tel:        +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
Cell:       +27 - (0)8 39 47 90 42
Fax (SA):   +27 - (0)8 65 16 27 82
Fax (D) :   +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44
Fax (FR):   +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44
email:      Rainer at krugs.de

Skype:      RMkrug
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAkyIxHYACgkQoYgNqgF2egofwQCePvkN3xewbSNEeKUiuxlL7Utx
CxMAniGRwoAWfJ8VNTPHLXIbtpiZCrMd
=fmFx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

For the compiled languages, it depends heavily on the compiler. This
sort of comparison is rendered moot by the huge variety of compiler and
hardware specific optimizations. My suggestion is to use C, or possibly
C++ in conjunction with Rcpp, as these are most compatible with R. Also,
C and C++ are consistently rated highly (often in the top 3) in
popularity and use. Fortran is not. This would make a difference if you
want to collaborate or ask for help.

-Matt

On Thu, 2010-09-09 at 06:26 -0400, Christofer Bogaso
wrote:
> Dear all, R offers integration mechanism with different programming
> languages like C, C++, Fortran, .NET etc. Therefore I am curious on,
> for heavy numerical computation which language is the fastest? Is
> there any study? I specially want to know because, if there is some
> study saying that C is the fastest language for numerical computation
> then I would change some of my R code into C.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
-- 
Matthew S. Shotwell
Graduate Student 
Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Medical University of South Carolina

Dirk E. has properly focussed the discussion on measurement rather than opinion.
I'll add
the issue of the human time taken to convert, and more importantly debug,
interfaced code.
That too could be measured, but we rarely see human hours to code/debug/test
reported.

Moreover, I'll mention the cat among the pigeons of Rcgmin, which I wrote to
allow me to
play with an optimization code more easily to discover where the algorithm might
be
improved. The resulting package on some problems outperforms C equivalents. Now
the code
is quite vectorized, but this has still been a very nice surprise. In fact,
I've decided
to avoid playing around with the interfaces if I can run things well-enough
entirely in R.

JN