Benchmark

This is a benchmark of the threads package, as well as a good real use-case example, using Torch neural network packages.

Please install torch7 with the neural network package nn before anything.

benchmark-threaded.lua compares to benchmark.lua, but parallelize over examples in a batch.

Consider the following things:

The ideal number of threads might be larger than your number of cores. This is really task specific. Each core must be loaded as much as possible!
Deactivate OpenMP (even through libraries like MKL!) to avoid Torch OpenMP threaded code (like convolutions) or MKL threads to fight for cores with the threads created by the script! For e.g.,

export OMP_NUM_THREADS=1 # Torch threaded code and BLAS
export VECLIB_MAXIMUM_THREADS=1 # MacOS X veclib

Remember there is an overhead with threads (benchmark.lua is here to remember it to you), and that only large networks will be advantageous.

Good night, and good luck.