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Asked: 2026-06-12T06:58:47+00:00

I was wondering how can matlab multiply two matrices so fast. When multiplying two

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I was wondering how can matlab multiply two matrices so fast. When multiplying two NxN matrices, N^3 multiplications are performed. Even with the Strassen Algorithm it takes N^2.8 multiplications, which is still a large number. I was running the following test program:

a = rand(2160);
b = rand(2160);
tic;a*b;toc

2160 was used because 2160^3=~10^10 ( a*b should be about 10^10 multiplications)

I got:

Elapsed time is 1.164289 seconds.

(I’m running on 2.4Ghz notebook and no threading occurs)
which mean my computer made ~10^10 operation in a little more than 1 second.

How this could be??

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It’s a combination of several things:

    • Matlab does indeed multi-thread.
    • The core is heavily optimized with vector instructions.

    Here’s the numbers on my machine: Core i7 920 @ 3.5 GHz (4 cores)

    >> a = rand(10000);
>> b = rand(10000);
>> tic;a*b;toc
Elapsed time is 52.624931 seconds.

    Task Manager shows 4 cores of CPU usage.

    Now for some math:

    Number of multiplies = 10000^3 = 1,000,000,000,000 = 10^12

Max multiplies in 53 secs =
    (3.5 GHz) * (4 cores) * (2 mul/cycle via SSE) * (52.6 secs) = 1.47 * 10^12

    So Matlab is achieving about 1 / 1.47 = 68% efficiency of the maximum possible CPU throughput.

    I see nothing out of the ordinary.

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