GNU GMP provides a functions called mpz_powm(rop, base, exp, mod) which allows me to power a very big integer value by another very big integer value. The function also forces me to modulate the result by the 4th parameter. That's what the "m" stands for in mpz_powm. The reason why there isn't a function without a mod parameter could be to avoid very big results which may fill up your whole memory like: 2^(2^64). I'd like to know if there is a possibility anyway to use that function without specifying a mod parameter by just taking the risk to reach your memory limit.
You are looking for mpz_pow_ui (). If the argument you wish to pass does not fit in a single word then the result wouldn't fit in memory anyway (except for the trivial cases):
void mpz_pow_ui (mpz_t ROP, mpz_t BASE, unsigned long int EXP)
If you don't want to modulate your answer, you'll need to use mpz_pow_ui. However, because exponentiating with a large mpz_t will create an integer that won't fit into memory, the exponent has to be an unsigned long int.
So just convert your exponent, and then use the function:
mpz_pow_ui (rop, base, mpz_get_ui(exp))
However, if your exponent is larger than ULONG_MAX, (typically 2^32-1), you'll get overflow errors.
Related
I am trying to read a .tif-file in julia as a Floating Point Array. With the FileIO & ImageMagick-Package I am able to do this, but the Array that I get is of the Type Array{ColorTypes.Gray{FixedPointNumbers.Normed{UInt8,8}},2}.
I can convert this FixedPoint-Array to Float32-Array by multiplying it with 255 (because UInt8), but I am looking for a function to do this for any type of FixedPointNumber (i.e. reinterpret() or convert()).
using FileIO
# Load the tif
obj = load("test.tif");
typeof(obj)
# Convert to Float32-Array
objNew = real.(obj) .* 255
typeof(objNew)
The output is
julia> using FileIO
julia> obj = load("test.tif");
julia> typeof(obj)
Array{ColorTypes.Gray{FixedPointNumbers.Normed{UInt8,8}},2}
julia> objNew = real.(obj) .* 255;
julia> typeof(objNew)
Array{Float32,2}
I have been looking in the docs quite a while and have not found the function with which to convert a given FixedPoint-Array to a FloatingPont-Array without multiplying it with the maximum value of the Integer type.
Thanks for any help.
edit:
I made a small gist to see if the solution by Michael works, and it does. Thanks!
Note:I don't know why, but the real.(obj) .* 255-code does not work (see the gist).
Why not just Float32.()?
using ColorTypes
a = Gray.(convert.(Normed{UInt8,8}, rand(5,6)));
typeof(a)
#Array{ColorTypes.Gray{FixedPointNumbers.Normed{UInt8,8}},2}
Float32.(a)
The short answer is indeed the one given by Michael, just use Float32.(a) (for grayscale). Another alternative is channelview(a), which generally performs channel separation thus also stripping the color information from the array. In the latter case you won't get a Float32 array, because your image is stored with 8 bits per pixel, instead you'll get an N0f8 (= FixedPointNumbers.Normed{UInt8,8}). You can read about those numbers here.
Your instinct to multiply by 255 is natural, given how other image-processing frameworks work, but Julia has made some effort to be consistent about "meaning" in ways that are worth taking a moment to think about. For example, in another programming language just changing the numerical precision of an array:
img = uint8(255*rand(10, 10, 3)); % an 8-bit per color channel image
figure; image(img)
imgd = double(img); % convert to double-precision, but don't change the values
figure; image(imgd)
produces the following surprising result:
That second "all white" image represents saturation. In this other language, "5" means two completely different things depending on whether it's stored in memory as a UInt8 vs a Float64. I think it's fair to say that under any normal circumstances, a user of a numerical library would call this a bug, and a very serious one at that, yet somehow many of us have grown to accept this in the context of image processing.
These new types arise because in Julia we've gone to the effort to implement new numerical types (FixedPointNumbers) that act like fractional values (e.g., between 0 and 1) but are stored internally with the same bit pattern as the "corresponding" UInt8 (the one you get by multiplying by 255). This allows us to work with 8-bit data and yet allow values to always be interpreted on a consistent scale (0.0=black, 1.0=white).
I have a struct defined as such:
typedef struct {
string mName;
vector<int> mParts;
} AGroup;
I'm storing instances of this struct in a vector. I need to write this to an HDF (v5) file. I guess I could loop through each instance to find the longest mName, and longest mParts, create a new, non-variable length, array to hold the information, and then write that array to the file.
Is that the best way to do it? It seems overly complex just to write some data.
Variable length arrays and string introduce overhead. But they also make sense as they reflect more accurately your data structure. You could go with a compound datatype made of a variable length C string and a variable length array of integers.
If your string and vectors all have a size close to the same upper bound, save yourself some time and trouble and use fixed length strings and arrays.
It all depends on the size of your dataset. In terms of disk space, there is a tradeoff between overhead of variable length elements and wasted space in fixed size elements that is hard to estimate without trying. If your dataset is small, do what is more convenient to you. If it is large, choose what you favor most: avoid wasted space, semantic of your data, ease of programming, etc. and optimize according to this criteria.
Hey there,
I have a mathematical function (multidimensional which means that there's an index which I pass to the C++-function on which single mathematical function I want to return. E.g. let's say I have a mathematical function like that:
f = Vector(x^2*y^2 / y^2 / x^2*z^2)
I would implement it like that:
double myFunc(int function_index)
{
switch(function_index)
{
case 1:
return PNT[0]*PNT[0]*PNT[1]*PNT[1];
case 2:
return PNT[1]*PNT[1];
case 3:
return PNT[2]*PNT[2]*PNT[1]*PNT[1];
}
}
whereas PNT is defined globally like that: double PNT[ NUM_COORDINATES ]. Now I want to implement the derivatives of each function for each coordinate thus generating the derivative matrix (columns = coordinates; rows = single functions). I wrote my kernel already which works so far and which call's myFunc().
The Problem is: For calculating the derivative of the mathematical sub-function i concerning coordinate j, I would use in sequential mode (on CPUs e.g.) the following code (whereas this is simplified because usually you would decrease h until you reach a certain precision of your derivative):
f0 = myFunc(i);
PNT[ j ] += h;
derivative = (myFunc(j)-f0)/h;
PNT[ j ] -= h;
now as I want to do this on the GPU in parallel, the problem is coming up: What to do with PNT? As I have to increase certain coordinates by h, calculate the value and than decrease it again, there's a problem coming up: How to do it without 'disturbing' the other threads? I can't modify PNT because other threads need the 'original' point to modify their own coordinate.
The second idea I had was to save one modified point for each thread but I discarded this idea quite fast because when using some thousand threads in parallel, this is a quite bad and probably slow (perhaps not realizable at all because of memory limits) idea.
'FINAL' SOLUTION
So how I do it currently is the following, which adds the value 'add' on runtime (without storing it somewhere) via preprocessor macro to the coordinate identified by coord_index.
#define X(n) ((coordinate_index == n) ? (PNT[n]+add) : PNT[n])
__device__ double myFunc(int function_index, int coordinate_index, double add)
{
//*// Example: f[i] = x[i]^3
return (X(function_index)*X(function_index)*X(function_index));
// */
}
That works quite nicely and fast. When using a derivative matrix with 10000 functions and 10000 coordinates, it just takes like 0.5seks. PNT is defined either globally or as constant memory like __constant__ double PNT[ NUM_COORDINATES ];, depending on the preprocessor variable USE_CONST.
The line return (X(function_index)*X(function_index)*X(function_index)); is just an example where every sub-function looks the same scheme, mathematically spoken:
f = Vector(x0^3 / x1^3 / ... / xN^3)
NOW THE BIG PROBLEM ARISES:
myFunc is a mathematical function which the user should be able to implement as he likes to. E.g. he could also implement the following mathematical function:
f = Vector(x0^2*x1^2*...*xN^2 / x0^2*x1^2*...*xN^2 / ... / x0^2*x1^2*...*xN^2)
thus every function looking the same. You as a programmer should only code once and not depending on the implemented mathematical function. So when the above function is being implemented in C++, it looks like the following:
__device__ double myFunc(int function_index, int coordinate_index, double add)
{
double ret = 1.0;
for(int i = 0; i < NUM_COORDINATES; i++)
ret *= X(i)*X(i);
return ret;
}
And now the memory accesses are very 'weird' and bad for performance issues because each thread needs access to each element of PNT twice. Surely, in such a case where each function looks the same, I could rewrite the complete algorithm which surrounds the calls to myFunc, but as I stated already: I don't want to code depending on the user-implemented function myFunc...
Could anybody come up with an idea how to solve this problem??
Thanks!
Rewinding back to the beginning and starting with a clean sheet, it seems you want to be able to do two things
compute an arbitrary scalar valued
function over an input array
approximate the partial derivative of an arbitrary scalar
valued function over the input array
using first order accurate finite differencing
While the function is scalar valued and arbitrary, it seems that there are, in fact, two clear forms which this function can take:
A scalar valued function with scalar arguments
A scalar valued function with vector arguments
You appeared to have started with the first type of function and have put together code to deal with computing both the function and the approximate derivative, and are now wrestling with the problem of how to deal with the second case using the same code.
If this is a reasonable summary of the problem, then please indicate so in a comment and I will continue to expand it with some code samples and concepts. If it isn't, I will delete it in a few days.
In comments, I have been trying to suggest that conflating the first type of function with the second is not a good approach. The requirements for correctness in parallel execution, and the best way of extracting parallelism and performance on the GPU are very different. You would be better served by treating both types of functions separately in two different code frameworks with different usage models. When a given mathematical expression needs to be implemented, the "user" should make a basic classification as to whether that expression is like the model of the first type of function, or the second. The act of classification is what drives algorithmic selection in your code. This type of "classification by algorithm" is almost universal in well designed libraries - you can find it in C++ template libraries like Boost and the STL, and you can find it in legacy Fortran codes like the BLAS.
I have a method that deals with some geographic coordinates in .NET, and I have a struct that stores a coordinate pair such that if 256 is passed in for one of the coordinates, it becomes 0. However, in one particular instance a value of approximately 255.99999998 is calculated, and thus stored in the struct. When it's printed in ToString(), it becomes 256, which should not happen - 256 should be 0. I wouldn't mind if it printed 255.9999998 but the fact that it prints 256 when the debugger shows 255.99999998 is a problem. Having it both store and display 0 would be even better.
Specifically there's an issue with comparison. 255.99999998 is sufficiently close to 256 such that it should equal it. What should I do when comparing doubles? use some sort of epsilon value?
EDIT: Specifically, my problem is that I take a value, perform some calculations, then perform the opposite calculations on that number, and I need to get back the original value exactly.
This sounds like a problem with how the number is printed, not how it is stored. A double has about 15 significant figures, so it can tell 255.99999998 from 256 with precision to spare.
You could use the epsilon approach, but the epsilon is typically a fudge to get around the fact that floating-point arithmetic is lossy.
You might consider avoiding binary floating-points altogether and use a nice Rational class.
The calculation above was probably destined to be 256 if you were doing lossless arithmetic as you would get with a Rational type.
Rational types can go by the name of Ratio or Fraction class, and are fairly simple to write
Here's one example.
Here's another
Edit....
To understand your problem consider that when the decimal value 0.01 is converted to a binary representation it cannot be stored exactly in finite memory. The Hexidecimal representation for this value is 0.028F5C28F5C where the "28F5C" repeats infinitely. So even before doing any calculations, you loose exactness just by storing 0.01 in binary format.
Rational and Decimal classes are used to overcome this problem, albeit with a performance cost. Rational types avoid this problem by storing a numerator and a denominator to represent your value. Decimal type use a binary encoded decimal format, which can be lossy in division, but can store common decimal values exactly.
For your purpose I still suggest a Rational type.
You can choose format strings which should let you display as much of the number as you like.
The usual way to compare doubles for equality is to subtract them and see if the absolute value is less than some predefined epsilon, maybe 0.000001.
You have to decide yourself on a threshold under which two values are equal. This amounts to using so-called fixed point numbers (as opposed to floating point). Then, you have to perform the round up manually.
I would go with some unsigned type with known size (eg. uint32 or uint64 if they're available, I don't know .NET) and treat it as a fixed point number type mod 256.
Eg.
typedef uint32 fixed;
inline fixed to_fixed(double d)
{
return (fixed)(fmod(d, 256.) * (double)(1 << 24))
}
inline double to_double(fixed f)
{
return (double)f / (double)(1 << 24);
}
or something more elaborated to suit a rounding convention (to nearest, to lower, to higher, to odd, to even). The highest 8 bits of fixed hold the integer part, the 24 lower bits hold the fractional part. Absolute precision is 2^{-24}.
Note that adding and substracting such numbers naturally wraps around at 256. For multiplication, you should beware.
I have to write, for academic purposes, an application that plots user-input expressions like: f(x) = 1 - exp(3^(5*ln(cosx)) + x)
The approach I've chosen to write the parser is to convert the expression in RPN with the Shunting-Yard algorithm, treating primitive functions like "cos" as unary operators. This means the function written above would be converted in a series of tokens like:
1, x, cos, ln, 5, *,3, ^, exp, -
The problem is that to plot the function I have to evaluate it LOTS of times, so applying the stack evaluation algorithm for each input value would be very inefficient.
How can I solve this? Do I have to forget the RPN idea?
How much is "LOTS of times"? A million?
What kind of functions could be input? Can we assume they are continuous?
Did you try measuring how well your code performs?
(Sorry, started off with questions!)
You could try one of the two approaches (or both) described briefly below (there are probably many more):
1) Parse Trees.
You could create a Parse Tree. Then do what most compilers do to optimize expressions, constant folding, common subexpression elimination (which you could achieve by linking together the common expression subtrees and caching the result), etc.
Then you could use lazy evaluation techniques to avoid whole subtrees. For instance if you have a tree
*
/ \
A B
where A evaluates to 0, you could completely avoid evaluating B as you know the result is 0. With RPN you would lose out on the lazy evaluation.
2) Interpolation
Assuming your function is continuous, you could approximate your function to a high degree of accuracy using Polynomial Interpolation. This way you can do the complicated calculation of the function a few times (based on the degree of polynomial you choose), and then do fast polynomial calculations for the rest of the time.
To create the initial set of data, you could just use approach 1 or just stick to using your RPN, as you would only be generating a few values.
So if you use Interpolation, you could keep your RPN...
Hope that helps!
Why reinvent the wheel? Use a fast scripting language instead.
Integrating something like lua into your code will take very little time and be very fast.
You'll usually be able byte compile your expression, and that should result in code that runs very fast, certainly fast enough for simple 1D graphs.
I recommend lua as its fast, and integrates with C/C++ easier than any other scripting language. Another good options would be python, but while its better known I found it trickier to integrate.
Why not keep around a parse tree (I use "tree" loosely, in your case it's a sequence of operations), and mark input variables accordingly? (e.g. for inputs x, y, z, etc. annotate "x" with 0 to signify the first input variable, "y" with 1 to signify the 2nd input variable, etc.)
That way you can parse the expression once, keep the parse tree, take in an array of inputs, and apply the parse tree to evaluate.
If you're worrying about the performance aspects of the evaluation step (vs. the parsing step), I don't think you'd do much better unless you get into vectorizing (applying your parse tree on a vector of inputs at once) or hard-coding the operations into a fixed function.
What I do is use the shunting algorithm to produce the RPN. I then "compile" the RPN into a tokenised form that can be executed (interpretively) repeatedly without re-parsing the expression.
Michael Anderson suggested Lua. If you want to try Lua for just this task, see my ae library.
Inefficient in what sense? There's machine time and programmer time. Is there a standard for how fast it needs to run with a particular level of complexity? Is it more important to finish the assignment and move on to the next one (perfectionists sometimes never finish)?
All those steps have to happen for each input value. Yes, you could have a heuristic that scans the list of operations and cleans it up a bit. Yes, you could compile some of it down to assembly instead of calling +, * etc. as high level functions. You can compare vectorization (doing all the +'s then all the *'s etc, with a vector of values) to doing the whole procedure for one value at a time. But do you need to?
I mean, what do you think happens if you plot a function in gnuplot or Mathematica?
Your simple interpretation of RPN should work just fine, especially since it contains
math library functions like cos, exp, and ^(pow, involving logs)
symbol table lookup
Hopefully, your symbol table (with variables like x in it) will be short and simple.
The library functions will most likely be your biggest time-takers, so unless your interpreter is poorly written, it will not be a problem.
If, however, you really gotta go for speed, you could translate the expression into C code, compile and link it into a dll on-the-fly and load it (takes about a second). That, plus memoized versions of the math functions, could give you the best performance.
P.S. For parsing, your syntax is pretty vanilla, so a simple recursive-descent parser (about a page of code, O(n) same as shunting-yard) should work just fine. In fact, you might just be able to compute the result as you parse (if math functions are taking most of the time), and not bother with parse trees, RPN, any of that stuff.
I think this RPN based library can serve the purpose: http://expressionoasis.vedantatree.com/
I used it with one of my calculator project and it works well. It is small and simple, but extensible.
One optimization would be to replace the stack with an array of values and implement the evaluator as a three address mechine where each operation loads from two (or one) location and saves to a third. This can make for very tight code:
struct Op {
enum {
add, sub, mul, div,
cos, sin, tan,
//....
} op;
int a, b, d;
}
void go(Op* ops, int n, float* v) {
for(int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
switch(ops[i].op) {
case add: v[op[i].d] = v[op[i].a] + v[op[i].b]; break;
case sub: v[op[i].d] = v[op[i].a] - v[op[i].b]; break;
case mul: v[op[i].d] = v[op[i].a] * v[op[i].b]; break;
case div: v[op[i].d] = v[op[i].a] / v[op[i].b]; break;
//...
}
}
}
The conversion from RPN to 3-address should be easy as 3-address is a generalization.