Single precision matrix multiplication
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Script:
M = 10000; N = 100;
A = round(10000 * complex(randn(M, N), randn(M, N)));
B = single(A') * single(A);
C = B' - B;
max(abs(C(:))) %// ==> answer is non-zero
A = single(A);
B = A' * A;
C = B' - B;
max(abs(C(:))) %// ==> answer is zero
Not sure what caused the difference? Thanks!
5 Comments
Bruno Luong
on 5 Aug 2022
This test seems to show that there is no extra intelligent parsing, but simply the expression (C*D) returns numerical Hermitian when C==D' in R2022a.
M = 10000; N = 100;
A = round(10000 * complex(randn(M, N), randn(M, N)));
A = single(A);
SAc = single(A');
isequal(SAc, A')
tic
B1 = SAc * A;
toc
norm(B1-B1','fro')
tic
B2 = A' * A;
toc
norm(B2-B2','fro')
norm(B1-B2,'fro')/norm(B2)
James Tursa
on 6 Aug 2022
Edited: James Tursa
on 6 Aug 2022
I can only guess, then, that the underlying BLAS library algorithms have changed. The timings and B1-B2 differences confirm that two different BLAS subroutines are called as has been the case historically. I don't have the latest version installed to investigate this further.
Accepted Answer
Matt J
on 12 Dec 2019
Edited: Matt J
on 12 Dec 2019
The Matlab interpreter runs a special dedicated "ctranspose-multiply" function to evaluate expressions of the form,
P'*Q
It does not do any explicit transposition of P, thus saving time and memory. This special function likely does a pre-check for the special case when P and Q are the same variable. In this case, it knows that it only has to compute the lower (or upper) triangular part of the resulting matrix, and can just copy the conjugate of that to the upper(lower) triangle. Thus, the output of A'*A will always be perfectly Hermitian.
However, for the expression,
single(P')*single(Q)
no special functions are used. Every operation in this expression (single,ctranpose,mtimes) is done separately and explicitly, and can generate floating point errors that may not be Hermitian across the final matrix.
2 Comments
James Tursa
on 12 Dec 2019
Edited: James Tursa
on 12 Dec 2019
Yes, but "A'*A will always be perfectly symmetric" should instead read "A'*A will always be perfectly Hermitian". And the triangular copy is a conjugate copy, not a straight copy.
More Answers (2)
James Tursa
on 12 Dec 2019
Edited: James Tursa
on 12 Dec 2019
To illustrate what Matt is saying, a simple timing test:
>> format longg
>> S = round(10000*single(rand(5000)+rand(5000)*1i));
>> St = S';
>> tic;SaS=S'*S;toc
Elapsed time is 1.675010 seconds.
>> tic;StS=St*S;toc
Elapsed time is 2.942037 seconds.
>> isequal(SaS,StS)
ans =
logical
0
>> isequal(SaS',SaS)
ans =
logical
1
>> isequal(StS',StS)
ans =
logical
0
The difference in timing is because the S'*S method only does about half the multiplication work with some added conjugate copying. And since the off-diagonal elements are the result of a copy, you get an exact Hermitian result for this case. Not so for the generic multiply case ... more on that below.
Another thing to note is that even though the individual elements are made of up integers, the intermediate sums overflow the precision of a single precision variable. Hence the difference in the results depending on the order of calculations even though the result is also made up of exact integers. E.g.,
>> SaS(1,1)
ans =
single
3.353673e+11
>> StS(1,1)
ans =
single
3.353673e+11 + 3408i
>> dot(S(:,1),S(:,1))
ans =
single
3.353671e+11
>> S(:,1)'*S(:,1)
ans =
single
3.353672e+11
Four different answers for the (1,1) spot depending on how we do the calculation.
Now lower the integer values so the intermediate sums do not overflow the precision of a single precision variable:
>> S = round(10*single(rand(5000)+rand(5000)*1i));
>> St = S';
>> tic;SaS=S'*S;toc
Elapsed time is 1.807634 seconds.
>> tic;StS=St*S;toc
Elapsed time is 2.977281 seconds.
>> isequal(SaS,StS)
ans =
logical
1
>> SaS(1,1)
ans =
single
329958
>> StS(1,1)
ans =
single
329958
>> dot(S(:,1),S(:,1))
ans =
single
329958
>> S(:,1)'*S(:,1)
ans =
single
329958
Here we get exactly the same results for the four different methods because the sums didn't overflow the precision of single precision.
7 Comments
James Tursa
on 5 Aug 2022
Edited: James Tursa
on 5 Aug 2022
If speed was not an issue, you could always write your own C mex routine to do the matrix multiply as a series of dot products using the BLAS dsdot( ) routine, which computes the dot product of single precision inputs using a double precision accumulator. This would be very easy to code and could even be multi-threaded, but would not run as fast as the single precision matrix multiply routines.
Walter Roberson
on 5 Aug 2022
Furthermore, that single precision hermitian inner products are slower than
double precision ones means there is no (ok, extremely extremely rarely?
a) point in ever taking a single precision hermitian inner product.
S = round(10*single(rand(5000)+rand(5000)*1i));
St = S';
tic;SaS=S'*S;toc
tic;StS=St*S;toc
dS = double(S);
dSt = double(St);
tic; dSaS = dS'*dS;toc
tic; dStS = dSt*dS;toc
Double precision looks slower ?
Donald Liu
on 12 Dec 2019
4 Comments
James Tursa
on 12 Dec 2019
You do the rounding before you do the multiply, so all the downstream calculations start with exactly the same values. The rounding you did has no effect on this. If everything starts with integral values, it won't matter what order you do the calculations AS LONG AS you don't overflow the precision of the variable type you are using. But in your case you did overflow this, hence the differences.
Matt J
on 12 Dec 2019
Edited: Matt J
on 12 Dec 2019
However, even single(A)' * single(A) is not strictly Hermitian, which is still puzzling.
Note that the first single(A) in the expression will not occupy the same memory address as the second single(A). Therefore, Matlab's ctranpose-multiply routine might not be recognizing them as the same matrix. Example:
>> format debug; A=rand(3); B=single(A), C=single(A),
B =
3×3 single matrix
Structure address = 13f3b4f00 %<-----Memory Address
m = 3
n = 3
pr = 12ebdd7e0
0.7265 0.2352 0.7033
0.6667 0.6863 0.5338
0.0327 0.2811 0.3319
C =
3×3 single matrix
Structure address = 13f37b270 %<-----Memory Address
m = 3
n = 3
pr = 12eb5dae0
0.7265 0.2352 0.7033
0.6667 0.6863 0.5338
0.0327 0.2811 0.3319
By contrast, in the following, Q and A do occupy the same memory address
M = 10000; N = 100;
A = round(10000 * complex(randn(M, N), randn(M, N)));
A = single(A);
Q=A;
B = Q' * A;
C = B' - B;
max(abs(C(:)))
ans =
single
0
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