Elementwise matrix multiplication: R versus Rcpp (How to speed this code up?)

Question

I am new to C++ programming (using Rcpp for seamless integration into R), and I would appreciate some advice on how to speed up some calcu

Answer 1

If you want to speed up your calculations you will have to be a little careful about not making copies. This usually means sacrificing readability. Here is a version which makes no copies and modifies matrix X inplace.

// [[Rcpp::export]]
NumericMatrix Rcpp_matvecprod_elwise(NumericMatrix & X, NumericVector & y){
  unsigned int ncol = X.ncol();
  unsigned int nrow = X.nrow();
  int counter = 0;
  for (unsigned int j=0; j

Here is what I get on my machine

 > library(microbenchmark)
 > microbenchmark(R=R_matvecprod_elwise(X, e), Arma=A_matvecprod_elwise(X, e),  Rcpp=Rcpp_matvecprod_elwise(X, e))

Unit: milliseconds
 expr       min        lq    median       uq      max neval
    R  8.262845  9.386214 10.542599 11.53498 12.77650   100
 Arma 18.852685 19.872929 22.782958 26.35522 83.93213   100
 Rcpp  6.391219  6.640780  6.940111  7.32773  7.72021   100

> all.equal(R_matvecprod_elwise(X, e), Rcpp_matvecprod_elwise(X, e))
[1] TRUE