# Multiply dense arrays

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/multiply-dense-arrays/47724>\
**Category:** Performance\
**Tags:** performance, matrices, tullio\
**Created:** [October 4, 2020, 4:06am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/multiply-dense-arrays/47724 "2020-10-04T04:06:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mason](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mason/32/2423_2.png) [@Mason](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Mason)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2020, 5:29am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/multiply-dense-arrays/47724/5 "2020-10-04T05:29:29Z")

</div>

`reduce(hcat, v)` and `reduce(vcat, v)` are actually optimized to be much more performant than `hcat(v...)` and `vcat(v...)`.

Here are the numbers I see comparing an optimized version of your solution (and a version where the `_cat` doesn’t happen at runtime) to the Tullio version:

```julia
julia> multiplyAndSum2(Gmρ,Gρq) = reduce(hcat, Gmρ)*reduce(vcat, Gρq)
multiplyAndSum2 (generic function with 1 method)

julia> multiplyAndSum3(Gmρ_block,Gρq_block) = Gmρ_block*Gρq_block
multiplyAndSum3 (generic function with 1 method)

julia> let dim = 500
           Gmρ = [rand(dim,18) for _ in 1:1024]
           Gρq = [rand(18,dim) for _ in 1:1024]
           Gmρ_tensor = reduce((x, y) -> cat(x, y, dims=3), Gmρ)
           Gρq_tensor = reduce((x, y) -> cat(x, y, dims=3), Gρq)
           
           Gmρ_block = reduce(hcat, Gmρ)
           Gρq_block = reduce(vcat, Gρq)
           
           out1 = @btime multiplyAndSum_tullio($Gmρ_tensor, $Gρq_tensor)
           out2 = @btime multiplyAndSum($Gmρ, $Gρq)
           out3 = @btime multiplyAndSum2($Gmρ, $Gρq)
           out4 = @btime multiplyAndSum3($Gmρ_block, $Gρq_block) 
           @show out1 ≈ out2 ≈ out3
       end
  71.913 ms (76 allocations: 1.91 MiB)
  1.241 s (4095 allocations: 3.81 GiB)
  118.128 ms (6 allocations: 142.53 MiB)
  70.622 ms (2 allocations: 1.91 MiB)
out1 ≈ out2 ≈ out3 = true

```

If the `cat`ing is hoisted out, your solution is ever so slightly faster. Nice!

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