Benchmarks for linear algebra frameworks

This benchmarking suite allows a direct comparison of popular linear algebra frameworks in C++. The libraries are easy-to-install using the conda package manager:

conda env create -f environment.yml

The environment.yml installs the following libraries:

• xtensor with xsimd
• Eigen3
• Armadillo
• Blitz++

After setting up the environment, it is advised to create a build directory, and execute cmake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$CONDA_PREFIX -DBENCHMARK_ALL=ON

You should see a message for each found library, similar to the following:

          COMPILING WITH
======================================

Found eigen     : /home/myuser/miniconda3/envs/bench/include/eigen3
Found Blitz     : /home/myuser/miniconda3/envs/bench/include | /home/myuser/miniconda3/envs/bench/lib/libblitz.so
Found Armadillo : /home/myuser/miniconda3/envs/bench/include | /home/myuser/miniconda3/envs/bench/lib/libarmadillo.so
Found xtensor   : /home/myuser/miniconda3/envs/bench/include
Found xsimd     : /home/myuser/miniconda3/envs/bench/include

This allows you to make sure you're compiling with the correct, up-to-date versions of the libraries.

To build and run the benchmarks, just use the following command:

make xbenchmark

If you are only interested in specific benchmarks, build with make xtensor_benchmark and then run manually ./xtensor_benchmark --benchmark_filter=my_benchmark. The backend to the benchmarks is the popular google-benchmark suite, so look there for more documentation.