Speed improvements and slowups 3.0.x to latest 3.1.x

[David Bateman]

To see if there were any speed regressions I just tried running the 
sciview benchmark on a 3.0.x version of Octave and comparing it against 
a build from the repository from a hour a ago. I got the results 
attached. The good news is that

* 3.1 is faster for transposes
* 3.1 is even faster than the above would explain for operations 
involving transposes like a' * a, though it appears that a \ b' doesn't 
get an advantage from this
* The Escoufier test is much faster, I presume due to the recent 
indexing fixes from Jaroslav..

The bad news is that the sorting appears to be slower.. Now there have 
been several changes to the sorting that were made, that major one from 
me that made the sort a method of the array classes. However, I seem to 
remember at the time I did this that I didn't notice significant speed 
changes.. I know Jaroslav replaced some malloc/free coe in the sort code 
with new/delete and a couple of other things... Could this be the cause? 
Any ideas how to get the speed of 3.0.x back for this test?

D.

--
David Bateman                                address@hidden
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   Octave Benchmark 2
   ==================
Number of times each test is run__________________________: 3
 
   I. Matrix calculation
   ---------------------
Creation, transp., deformation of a 1500x1500 matrix (sec): 1.0041
800x800 normal distributed random matrix ^1000______ (sec): 0.27202
Sorting of 2,000,000 random values__________________ (sec): 1.2774
700x700 cross-product matrix (b = a' * a)___________ (sec): 1.7454
Linear regression over a 600x600 matrix (c = a \\ b') (sec): 0.4987
                  ------------------------------------------------------
                Trimmed geom. mean (2 extremes eliminated): 0.86161
 
   II. Matrix functions
   --------------------
FFT over 800,000 random values______________________ (sec): 0.38669
Eigenvalues of a 320x320 random matrix______________ (sec): 1.7508
Determinant of a 650x650 random matrix______________ (sec): 0.61604
Cholesky decomposition of a 900x900 matrix__________ (sec): 0.72138
Inverse of a 400x400 random matrix__________________ (sec): 0.40536
                  ------------------------------------------------------
                Trimmed geom. mean (2 extremes eliminated): 0.56477
 
   III. Programmation
   ------------------
750,000 Fibonacci numbers calculation (vector calc)_ (sec): 0.70271
Creation of a 2250x2250 Hilbert matrix (matrix calc) (sec): 0.86139
Grand common divisors of 70,000 pairs (recursion)___ (sec): 0.63471
Creation of a 220x220 Toeplitz matrix (loops)_______ (sec): 4.5229
Escoufier's method on a 37x37 matrix (mixed)________ (sec): 6.1804
                  ------------------------------------------------------
                Trimmed geom. mean (2 extremes eliminated): 1.3989
 
 
Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 21.58
Overall mean (sum of I, II and III trimmed means/3)_ (sec): 0.86161    0.56477  
   1.3989
                      --- End of test ---

   Octave Benchmark 2
   ==================
Number of times each test is run__________________________: 3
 
   I. Matrix calculation
   ---------------------
Creation, transp., deformation of a 1500x1500 matrix (sec): 0.71071
800x800 normal distributed random matrix ^1000______ (sec): 0.28002
Sorting of 2,000,000 random values__________________ (sec): 1.5521
700x700 cross-product matrix (b = a' * a)___________ (sec): 0.95073
Linear regression over a 600x600 matrix (c = a \\ b') (sec): 0.4747
                  ------------------------------------------------------
                Trimmed geom. mean (2 extremes eliminated): 0.68452
 
   II. Matrix functions
   --------------------
FFT over 800,000 random values______________________ (sec): 0.38136
Eigenvalues of a 320x320 random matrix______________ (sec): 1.8068
Determinant of a 650x650 random matrix______________ (sec): 0.56537
Cholesky decomposition of a 900x900 matrix__________ (sec): 0.71338
Inverse of a 400x400 random matrix__________________ (sec): 0.39602
                  ------------------------------------------------------
                Trimmed geom. mean (2 extremes eliminated): 0.54257
 
   III. Programmation
   ------------------
750,000 Fibonacci numbers calculation (vector calc)_ (sec): 0.72538
Creation of a 2250x2250 Hilbert matrix (matrix calc) (sec): 0.93606
Grand common divisors of 70,000 pairs (recursion)___ (sec): 0.44669
Creation of a 220x220 Toeplitz matrix (loops)_______ (sec): 4.915
Escoufier's method on a 37x37 matrix (mixed)________ (sec): 3.7162
                  ------------------------------------------------------
                Trimmed geom. mean (2 extremes eliminated): 1.3614
 
 
Total time for all 15 tests_________________________ (sec): 18.57
Overall mean (sum of I, II and III trimmed means/3)_ (sec): 0.79667
                      --- End of test ---