Numba: Flexible analytics written in PythonWith  machine  code  speeds  while  potentially  releasing  the  GIL

Space of Python CompilationAhead Of Time Just In Time

Relies on CPython / libpython

Cython Shedskin

Nuitka (today) Pythran

Numba

Numba HOPE

Theano Pyjion

Replaces CPython / libpython

Nuitka (future) Pyston PyPy

Compiler overview

Intermediate Representation

(IR)

x86C++

ARM

PTX

C

Fortran

ObjCCode  Generation    

BackendParsing  Frontend

Numba

Intermediate Representation

(IR)

x86

ARM

PTX

Python

LLVMNumba

Parsing  Frontend Code  Generation    Backend

ExampleNumba

How Numba works

Bytecode Analysis

Python Function

Function Arguments

Type Inference

Numba IR

LLVM IRMachine Code

@jitdef do_math(a,b): …>>> do_math(x, y)

Cache

Execute!

Rewrite IR

Lowering

LLVM JIT

• Numba supports: – Windows, OS X, and Linux – 32 and 64-bit x86 CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs – Python 2 and 3 – NumPy versions 1.6 through 1.9

• Does not require a C/C++ compiler on the user’s system. • < 70 MB to install. • Does not replace the standard Python interpreter

(all of your existing Python libraries are still available)

Numba Features

• object mode: Compiled code operates on Python objects. Only significant performance improvement is compilation of loops that can be compiled in nopython mode (see below).

• nopython mode: Compiled code operates on “machine native” data. Usually within 25% of the performance of equivalent C or FORTRAN.

Numba Modes

1. Create a realistic benchmark test case.(Do not use your unit tests as a benchmark!)

2. Run a profiler on your benchmark.(cProfile is a good choice)

3. Identify hotspots that could potentially be compiled by Numba with a little refactoring.(see rest of this talk and online documentation)

4. Apply @numba.jit and @numba.vectorize as needed to critical functions. (Small rewrites may be needed to work around Numba limitations.)

5. Re-run benchmark to check if there was a performance improvement.

How to Use Numba

• Sometimes you can’t create a simple or efficient array expression or ufunc. Use Numba to work with array elements directly.

• Example: Suppose you have a boolean grid and you want to find the maximum number neighbors a cell has in the grid:

A Whirlwind Tour of Numba Features

The Basics

The Basics

Array Allocation

Looping over ndarray x as an iterator

Using numpy math functions

Returning a slice of the array

2.7x speedup!

Numba decorator (nopython=True not required)

Calling Other Functions

Calling Other FunctionsThis function is not

inlined

This function is inlined

9.8x speedup compared to doing this with numpy functions

Making Ufuncs

Making Ufuncs

Monte Carlo simulating 500,000 tournaments in 50 ms

Case-study -- j0 from scipy.special• scipy.special was one of the first libraries I wrote (in 1999)• extended “umath” module by adding new “universal functions” to

compute many scientific functions by wrapping C and Fortran libs.• Bessel functions are solutions to a differential equation:

x

2 d2y

dx

2+ x

dy

dx

+ (x2 � ↵

2)y = 0

y = J↵ (x)

Jn (x) =1

⇡

Z ⇡

0cos (n⌧ � x sin (⌧)) d⌧

scipy.special.j0 wraps cephes algorithm

Don’t  need  this  anymore!

Result --- equivalent to compiled codeIn [6]: %timeit vj0(x) 10000 loops, best of 3: 75 us per loop

In [7]: from scipy.special import j0

In [8]: %timeit j0(x) 10000 loops, best of 3: 75.3 us per loop

But! Now code is in Python and can be experimented with more easily (and moved to the GPU / accelerator more easily)!

Word starting to get out!Recent  numba  mailing  list  reports  experiments  of  a  SciPy  author  who  got  2x  speed-­‐up  by  removing  their  Cython  type  annotations  and  surrounding  function  with  numba.jit  (with  a  few  minor  changes  needed  to  the  code).

As  soon  as  Numba’s  ahead-­‐of-­‐time  compilation  moves  beyond  experimental  stage  one  can  legitimately  use  Numba  to  create  a  library  that  you  ship  to  others  (who  then  don’t  need  to  have  Numba  installed  —  or  just  need  a  Numba  run-­‐time  installed).

SciPy  (and  NumPy)  would  look  very  different  in  Numba  had  existed  16  years  ago  when  SciPy  was  getting  started….  —  and  you  would  all  be  happier.

Generators

Releasing the GILMany  fret  about  the  GIL  in  Python  With  PyData  Stack  you  often  have  multi-­‐threaded  In  PyData  Stack  we  quite  often  release  GIL  

NumPy  does  it  SciPy  does  it  (quite  often)  Scikit-­‐learn  (now)  does  it  Pandas  (now)  does  it  when  possible  Cython  makes  it  easy  Numba  makes  it  easy

Releasing the GIL

Only nopython mode functions can release

the GIL

Releasing the GIL

2.8x speedup with 4 cores

CUDA Python (in open-source Numba!)

CUDA Developmentusing Python syntax for optimal performance!

You have to understand CUDA at least a little —

writing kernels that launch in parallel on the

GPU

Example: Black-Scholes

Black-Scholes: Results

core i7 GeForce GTX 560 Ti About 9x

faster on this GPU

~ same speed as CUDA-C

• CUDA Simulator to debug your code in Python interpreter • Generalized ufuncs (@guvectorize) • Call ctypes and cffi functions directly and pass them as arguments • Preliminary support for types that understand the buffer protocol • Pickle Numba functions to run on remote execution engines • “numba annotate” to dump HTML annotated version of compiled

code • See: http://numba.pydata.org/numba-doc/0.20.0/

Other interesting things

(A non-comprehensive list) • Sets, lists, dictionaries, user defined classes (tuples do work!) • List, set and dictionary comprehensions • Recursion • Exceptions with non-constant parameters • Most string operations (buffer support is very preliminary!) • yield from • closures inside a JIT function (compiling JIT functions inside a closure works…) • Modifying globals • Passing an axis argument to numpy array reduction functions • Easy debugging (you have to debug in Python mode).

What Doesn’t Work?

(Also a non-comprehensive list) • “JIT Classes” • Better support for strings/bytes, buffers, and parsing use-

cases • More coverage of the Numpy API (advanced indexing, etc) • Documented extension API for adding your own types, low

level function implementations, and targets. • Better debug workflows

The (Near) Future

• Lots of progress in the past year! • Try out Numba on your numerical and Numpy-related

projects: conda install numba

• Your feedback helps us make Numba better!Tell us what you would like to see:https://github.com/numba/numba

• Stay tuned for more exciting stuff this year…

Conclusion

221  W.  6th  Street  Suite  #1550  Austin,  TX  78701  +1  512.222.5440

info@continuum.io  

@ContinuumIO  

Thanks to Entire Numba team and Numba users!Stan Seibert, Antoine Pitrou, Siu Kwan Lam, Jon Riehl, Graham Markall, Oscar Villellas, Jay Borque and a host of others…