Speed up random number generation in MATLAB

Question

Is there any way to generate pseudo-random numbers to less precision and thus speed the process up?

Another thing is that I know it saves time if random numbers are

Answer 1

Since R2015a the rng function for configuring and seeding the global generator has a 'simdTwister' option that uses a faster "SIMD-oriented Fast Mersenne Twister" algorithm:

rng(1,'twister');
R = rand(1e4); % Warmup for timing
tic
R = rand(1e4);
toc

rng(1,'simdTwister');
R = rand(1e4); % Warmup for timing
tic
R = rand(1e4);
toc

This will probably be the fastest builtin generator for your system (excepting the possibility of GPU-based generators). On my computer it's a little more than twice as fast as the default Mersenne Twister algorithm for large arrays.