What are the downsides of using Bigarray when interfacing with C is not an issue? Are they slower, in particular for small 2D matrices?
What are the downsides of using Bigarray when interfacing with C is not an
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What are the downsides of using Bigarray when interfacing with C is not an issue? Are they slower, in particular for small 2D matrices?
Just based on looking through the implementations, I’d say that bigarrays might be slower if you create large numbers of short-lived arrays. It looks like the memory for them is managed outside the usual OCaml GC, which handles short-lived objects extremely well.
You also might find that accesses to bigarrays aren’t inlined, whereas accesses to the built-in arrays would be.
On the other hand, built-in arrays are going to have an extra indirection for two-dimensions.
If the performance really matters, you’ll probably have to benchmark your particular application.