---
title: "performance"
output: rmarkdown::html_vignette
vignette: >
%\VignetteIndexEntry{performance}
%\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
%\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
---
```{r, include = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
collapse = TRUE,
comment = "#>",
fig.width = 8,
fig.height = 3.5
)
```
```{r setup}
library(lazymatrix)
```
# Performance of `lazymatrix`
In this vignette, we discuss the main reason for lazy computation, namely the increase in performance.
Assume `X` as the sparse data matrix containing fetures, `lazy_X` the `LazyMatrix` object and `A` is the normalized version obtained using `base::scale(X)`.
We use the package `bench` to microbenchmark the computation time of matrix-vector multiplication, hence comparing the operation `lazy_X%*%b` against `A%*%b`.
Thereafter, we look at memory allocation, where we compare storing the `LazyMatrix` object and the normalized object.
## Helper Functions
For these experiment, we need a set of helper functions.
As the main use-case is working with sparse data, we define a helper forgenerating sparse matrices `create_sparse_matrix_col()` which allows for adjusting the parameter `sparsity_col` so the proportion of elements that are non-zero within each column.
For simplicity, this parameter will be called $\alpha$,
Then, we use the helper `bench_multiply()` where we define the `LazyMatrix` object for the input matrix, normalize it and then we benchmark matrix-vector multiplication.
The function `benchmark_memory()` is written in a similar way, though it uses `utils::object.size()` to measure memory allocation of an object, the lazy and the dense.
Lastly, two helper functions which are used for using consistent themes for `ggplot2` throughout the vignette.
```{r helper-functions}
library(Matrix)
library(bench)
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
#--------------------------------------------------
# Sparse matrix generator
#--------------------------------------------------
create_sparsematrix_col <- function(n, p, sparsity_col) {
# sparsity_col = fraction of non-zeros PER COLUMN
# So each column has round(sparsity_col * n) non-zero entries
n_nonzero_col <- round(sparsity_col * n)
i_all <- c()
j_all <- c()
for (col in 1:p) {
i_col <- sample(1:n, n_nonzero_col, replace = FALSE)
i_all <- c(i_all, i_col)
j_all <- c(j_all, rep(col, n_nonzero_col))
}
pairs <- unique(data.frame(i = i_all, j = j_all))
x <- rnorm(nrow(pairs))
Matrix::sparseMatrix(
i = pairs$i,
j = pairs$j,
x = x,
dims = c(n, p)
)
}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Benchmark function Computation Time
#--------------------------------------------------
bench_multiply <- function(sparse_matrix, b) {
A <- scale(sparse_matrix, center = TRUE, scale = TRUE)
X <- LazyMatrix(sparse_matrix, "sd", "mean")
bench::mark(
dense_product = { A %*% b },
lazy_product = { X %*% b },
check = FALSE,
min_iterations = 20
)
}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Benchmark function for Memory Allocation
#--------------------------------------------------
benchmark_memory <- function(M) {
dense_size <- tryCatch({
A_dense <- scale(as.matrix(M), center = TRUE, scale = TRUE)
mem <- as.numeric(utils::object.size(A_dense)) / 1024^2
rm(A_dense); gc()
data.frame(method = "Dense", success = TRUE, mem_MB = mem)
}, error = function(e) {
message("Dense error: ", e$message)
data.frame(method = "Dense", success = FALSE, mem_MB = NA)
})
lazy_size <- tryCatch({
X_lazy <- LazyMatrix(M, "sd", "mean")
mem <- as.numeric(utils::object.size(X_lazy)) / 1024^2
rm(X_lazy); gc()
data.frame(method = "Lazy", success = TRUE, mem_MB = mem)
}, error = function(e) {
message("Lazy error: ", e$message)
data.frame(method = "Lazy", success = FALSE, mem_MB = NA)
})
bind_rows(dense_size, lazy_size)
}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Plot Theme used throughout the thesis for ggplot2
#--------------------------------------------------
thesis_theme <- function(base_size = 12) {
theme(
panel.background = element_rect(fill = "white", colour = NA),
plot.background = element_rect(fill = "white", colour = NA),
panel.grid.major = element_line(colour = "grey85"),
panel.grid.minor = element_line(colour = "grey92"),
panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black", fill = NA, linewidth = 0.8),
text = element_text(size = base_size),
axis.text = element_text(size = rel(1.01)),
axis.text.x = element_text(size = rel(1.01), angle = 45, hjust = 1)
)
}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Plot Theme used throughout vignettes for ggplot2
#--------------------------------------------------
vignette_theme <- function(base_size = 12) {
theme_minimal(base_size = base_size) +
theme(
# Subtle background strip for facet labels
strip.background = element_rect(fill = "#f0f0f0", colour = NA),
strip.text = element_text(face = "bold", size = rel(0.95)),
# Thin, unobtrusive grid
panel.grid.major = element_line(colour = "grey88", linewidth = 0.4),
panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
# Light border just around facet panels
panel.border = element_rect(colour = "grey70", fill = NA, linewidth = 0.5),
panel.spacing = unit(0.8, "lines"),
# Legend inside or on top saves horizontal space in HTML
legend.position = "top",
legend.key.width = unit(1.8, "lines"),
# Axis: no need to rotate if labels are short
axis.text.x = element_text(size = rel(0.9)),
axis.text.y = element_text(size = rel(0.9)),
axis.title = element_text(size = rel(0.95)),
plot.margin = margin(8, 12, 8, 8)
)
}
```
## Results of Computation Time Benchmark
We run the experiment as follows: let `n` be the number of rows of the sparse matrix which we let be constant for all matrices at `n <- 10000`.
In statistics, the number of rows usually denotes the number of observations and the columns the features.
Hence, letting `n` be constant and augmenting the columns `p` reflects the experiment of adding features to an existing dataset.
Apart from dimensionality, the experiment also depends on sparsity, so the proportion of non-zero elements for every column.
We test for three levels of sparsity, 5 %, 0.1 % and 0.01 %.
A rule of thumb when working with sparse matrices, is that the larger the dimensionality, the lesser the sparsity usually.
Then, we run the benchmark function for matrix-vector multiplication defined above for every `p` and every `sparsity`.
The results are therafter translated into seconds and we keep them in a tibble which is used to graph the result.
```{r}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Parameters (smaller for testing)
#--------------------------------------------------
n <- 10000
sparsity_cols <- c(0.05, 0.001, 0.0001)
p_values <- c(50, 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000)
#--------------------------------------------------
# Run benchmarks
#--------------------------------------------------
results <- list()
counter <- 1
for (sc in sparsity_cols) {
cat("Running sparsity_col =", sc, "\n")
for (p in p_values) {
cat(" p =", p, "\n")
M <- create_sparsematrix_col(n = n, p = p, sparsity_col = sc)
b <- rnorm(p)
bm <- bench_multiply(M, b)
tmp <- bm %>%
select(expression, min, median, mem_alloc) %>%
mutate(sparsity_col = sc, n = n, p = p)
results[[counter]] <- tmp
counter <- counter + 1
rm(M); gc()
}
}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Process results
#--------------------------------------------------
benchmark_results <- bind_rows(results) %>%
mutate(
method = as.character(expression),
median_sec = as.numeric(median),
min_sec = as.numeric(min)
)
```
The results are presented in the following plot.
```{r}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Plot for computation time
#--------------------------------------------------
ggplot(
benchmark_results %>%
mutate(sc_label = factor(
paste0("alpha = ", sparsity_col),
levels = paste0("alpha = ", sort(unique(sparsity_col)))
)),
aes(x = p, y = median_sec, color = method, group = method)
) +
geom_line(linewidth = 1) +
geom_point(size = 2) +
scale_y_log10() +
facet_wrap(~ sc_label, nrow = 1) +
labs(
x = "Number of columns (p)",
y = "Median runtime (seconds, log scale)",
color = "Method"
) +
vignette_theme(13)
```
Each facet corresponds to a sparsity level, with the logarithm of median runtime on the vertical axis and the number of features $p$ on the horizontal axis.
The red line represents the dense computation while the blue is the lazy computation.
Looking at the figure, we note that dense computation requires $O(np)$ operations for the centering step, regardless of sparsity, since every element must be explicitly centered.
This is confirmed in the plot, where the dense curve is identical across all three facets, increasing only with $p$.
The blue line representing the lazy computation however, shows clearly that computation time decreases as $\alpha$ gets lower.
For $\alpha=0.05$, the trend is similar to that of the dense computation, in the sense that as dimensionality gets higher, so does computation time.
This follows from the $O(k + p)$ complexity of lazy computation, which approaches $O(np)$ as $\alpha$ increases.
Conversely, as sparsity decreases and $k \ll np$, the computational advantage of lazy evaluation becomes clear.
Lazy computation exploits sparsity by operating only over the $k$ non-zero entries, avoiding the redundant computation on zero-valued elements that dense methods perform.
Hence, the lazy computation gets better the sparser the matrix is, and also better the higher the dimensionality compared to dense methods.
## Results of Memory Benchmark
The benchmark experiment is similar to that of computation time.
We let $n$ be constant, augment $p$ and test for three levels of sparsity.
Here, the measurements we make is the amount of memory used for storing the different objects.
```{r}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Parameters
#--------------------------------------------------
n <- 10000
sparsity_cols <- c(0.05, 0.001, 0.0001)
p_values <- c(50, 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000)
#--------------------------------------------------
# Process results
#--------------------------------------------------
results <- list()
counter <- 1
for (sc in sparsity_cols) {
cat("Running sparsity_col =", sc, "\n")
for (p in p_values) {
cat(" p =", p, "\n")
M <- create_sparsematrix_col(n = n, p = p, sparsity_col = sc)
mem_res <- benchmark_memory(M)
mem_res <- mem_res %>%
mutate(sparsity_col = sc, n = n, p = p)
results[[counter]] <- mem_res
counter <- counter + 1
rm(M); gc()
}
}
memory_results_col <- bind_rows(results) %>%
mutate(mem_GB = mem_MB / 1024)
```
The results are presented in the following plot.
```{r}
#--------------------------------------------------
# Plot for Memory Allocation
#--------------------------------------------------
ggplot(
memory_results_col %>%
mutate(sc_label = factor(
paste0("alpha = ", sparsity_col),
levels = paste0("alpha = ", sort(unique(sparsity_col)))
)),
aes(x = p, y = mem_GB, color = method, group = method)
) +
geom_line(linewidth = 1) +
geom_point(size = 2) +
scale_y_log10(
labels = scales::label_number(suffix = " GB", accuracy = 0.0001)
) +
facet_wrap(~ sc_label, nrow = 1) +
labs(
x = "Number of columns (p)",
y = "Allocated memory (GB, log scale)",
color = "Method"
) +
vignette_theme(13)
```
Each facet corresponds to a sparsity level, with the logarithm of median runtime on the vertical axis and the number of features $p$ on the horizontal axis.
The red line represents the dense memory consumption while the blue is the lazy object's.
A key motivation for `lazymatrix` is the memory inefficiency of explicitly materializing normalized matrices.
We therefore construct a memory benchmark under the same experimental setting as above, measuring memory usage rather than computation time.
The dense representation requires $O(np)$ memory regardless of sparsity, as centering destroys the sparse structure and forces a full materialization of the matrix.
As expected, the dense representation grows linearly in memory with increasing dimensionality.
The implication being that using dense methods is infeasible for larger-scale data.
The lazy representation follows a similar growth pattern at $\alpha = 0.05$, as the data matrix and its associated location and scale parameters together require $O(k + p)$ memory, and $k$ remains large relative to $np$ at high sparsity levels.
As sparsity increases, however, $k \ll np$ and the lazy representation retains significantly fewer bytes, directly reflecting the theoretical memory complexity established earlier.
For the sparsest facet, memory consumption still grows with $p$ but remains orders of magnitude smaller than the dense representation across all three dimensions.
In applications, high dimensionality and high sparsity tend to be correlated, hence it is crucial for `LazyMatrix`to perform well with the two parameters considered.