Row-major vs Column-major confusion

Question

I\'ve been reading a lot about this, the more I read the more confused I get.

My understanding: In row-major rows are stored contiguously in memory, in column-major colu

Answer 1

A short addendum to above answers. In terms of C, where memory is accessed almost directly, the row-major or column-major order affects your program in 2 ways: 1. It affects the layout of your matrix in memory 2. The order of element access that must be kept - in the form of ordering loops.

1. is explained quite thoroughly in the previous answers, so I will add to 2.

eulerworks answer points out that in his example, using row major matrix brought about significant slow down in calculation. Well, he is right, but the result can be at the same time reversed.

The loop order was for(over rows) { for(over columns) { do something over a matrix } }. Which means that the dual loop will access elements in a row and then move over to the next row. For example, A(0,1) -> A(0,2) -> A(0,3) -> ... -> A(0,N_ROWS) -> A(1,0) -> ...

In such case, if A was stored in row major format there would be minimal cache misses since the elements will probably lined up in linear fashion in memory. Otherwise in column-major format, memory access will jump around using N_ROWS as a stride. So row-major is faster in the case.

Now, we can actually switch the loop, such that it will for(over columns) { for(over rows) { do something over a matrix } }. For this case, the result will be exactly the opposite. Column major calculation will be faster since the loop will read elements in columns in linear fashion.

Hence, you might as well remember this: 1. Selecting row major or column major storage format is up to your taste, even though the traditional C programming community seem to prefer the row-major format. 2. Although you are pretty much free to choose whatever you may like, you need to be consistent with the notion of the indexing. 3. Also, this is quite important, keep in mind that when writing down your own algorithms, try to order the loops so that it will honor the storage format of your choice. 4. Be consistent.