Math optimization in C#

Question

I\'ve been profiling an application all day long and, having optimized a couple bits of code, I\'m left with this on my todo list. It\'s the activation function for a neural

Answer 1

This is slightly off topic, but just out of curiosity, I did the same implementation as the one in C, C# and F# in Java. I'll just leave this here in case someone else is curious.

Result:

$ javac LUTTest.java && java LUTTest
Max deviation is 0.001664
10^7 iterations using sigmoid1() took 1398 ms
10^7 iterations using sigmoid2() took 177 ms

I suppose the improvement over C# in my case is due to Java being better optimized than Mono for OS X. On a similar MS .NET-implementation (vs. Java 6 if someone wants to post comparative numbers) I suppose the results would be different.

Code:

public class LUTTest {
    private static final float SCALE = 320.0f;
    private static final  int RESOLUTION = 2047;
    private static final  float MIN = -RESOLUTION / SCALE;
    private static final  float MAX = RESOLUTION / SCALE;

    private static final float[] lut = initLUT();

    private static float[] initLUT() {
        float[] lut = new float[RESOLUTION + 1];

        for (int i = 0; i < RESOLUTION + 1; i++) {
            lut[i] = (float)(1.0 / (1.0 + Math.exp(-i / SCALE)));
        }
        return lut;
    }

    public static float sigmoid1(double value) {
        return (float) (1.0 / (1.0 + Math.exp(-value)));
    }

    public static float sigmoid2(float value) {
        if (value <= MIN) return 0.0f;
        if (value >= MAX) return 1.0f;
        if (value >= 0) return lut[(int)(value * SCALE + 0.5f)];
        return 1.0f - lut[(int)(-value * SCALE + 0.5f)];
    }

    public static float error(float v0, float v1) {
        return Math.abs(v1 - v0);
    }

    public static float testError() {
        float emax = 0.0f;
        for (float x = -10.0f; x < 10.0f; x+= 0.00001f) {
            float v0 = sigmoid1(x);
            float v1 = sigmoid2(x);
            float e = error(v0, v1);
            if (e > emax) emax = e;
        }
        return emax;
    }

    public static long sigmoid1Perf() {
        float y = 0.0f;
        long t0 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            for (float x = -5.0f; x < 5.0f; x+= 0.00001f) {
                y = sigmoid1(x);
            }
        }
        long t1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        System.out.printf("",y);
        return t1 - t0;
    }    

    public static long sigmoid2Perf() {
        float y = 0.0f;
        long t0 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            for (float x = -5.0f; x < 5.0f; x+= 0.00001f) {
                y = sigmoid2(x);
            }
        }
        long t1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        System.out.printf("",y);
        return t1 - t0;
    }    

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        System.out.printf("Max deviation is %f\n", testError());
        System.out.printf("10^7 iterations using sigmoid1() took %d ms\n", sigmoid1Perf());
        System.out.printf("10^7 iterations using sigmoid2() took %d ms\n", sigmoid2Perf());
    }
}