Binary Extension Fields¶

This page compares the performance of galois performing finite field multiplication in \(\mathrm{GF}(2^m)\) with native NumPy performing only modular multiplication.

Native NumPy cannot easily perform finite field multiplication in \(\mathrm{GF}(2^m)\) because it involves polynomial multiplication (convolution) followed by reducing modulo the irreducible polynomial. To make a similar comparison, NumPy will perform integer multiplication followed by integer remainder division.

Important

Native NumPy is not computing the correct result! This is not a fair fight!

These are not fair comparisons because NumPy is not computing the correct product. However, they are included here to provide a performance reference point with native NumPy.

Lookup table performance¶

This section tests galois when using the "jit-lookup" compilation mode. For finite fields with order less than or equal to \(2^{20}\), galois uses lookup tables by default for efficient arithmetic.

Below are examples computing 10 million multiplications in the binary extension field \(\mathrm{GF}(2^8)\).

In [1]: import galois

In [2]: GF = galois.GF(2**8)

In [3]: GF.ufunc_mode
Out[3]: 'jit-lookup'

In [4]: a = GF.Random(10_000_000, seed=1, dtype=int)

In [5]: b = GF.Random(10_000_000, seed=2, dtype=int)

# Invoke the ufunc once to JIT compile it, if necessary
In [6]: a * b
Out[6]: GF([181,  92, 148, ..., 255, 220, 153], order=2^8)

In [7]: %timeit a * b
33.9 ms ± 1.64 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

NumPy, even when computing the incorrect result, is ~1.9x slower than galois. This is because galois is using lookup tables instead of explicitly performing the polynomial multiplication and division.

In [8]: import numpy as np

In [9]: aa, bb = a.view(np.ndarray), b.view(np.ndarray)

In [10]: pp = int(GF.irreducible_poly)

# This does not produce the correct result!
In [11]: %timeit (aa * bb) % pp
64 ms ± 747 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

Explicit calculation performance¶

This section tests galois when using the "jit-calculate" compilation mode. For finite fields with order greater than \(2^{20}\), galois will use explicit arithmetic calculation by default rather than lookup tables.

Below are examples computing 10 million multiplications in the binary extension field \(\mathrm{GF}(2^{32})\).

In [1]: import galois

In [2]: GF = galois.GF(2**32)

In [3]: GF.ufunc_mode
Out[3]: 'jit-calculate'

In [4]: a = GF.Random(10_000_000, seed=1, dtype=int)

In [5]: b = GF.Random(10_000_000, seed=2, dtype=int)

# Invoke the ufunc once to JIT compile it, if necessary
In [6]: a * b
Out[6]:
GF([1174047800, 3249326965, 3196014003, ..., 3195457330,  100242821,
    338589759], order=2^32)

In [7]: %timeit a * b
386 ms ± 14 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

The galois library when using explicit calculation is only ~3.9x slower than native NumPy, which isn’t even computing the correct product.

In [8]: import numpy as np

In [9]: aa, bb = a.view(np.ndarray), b.view(np.ndarray)

In [10]: pp = int(GF.irreducible_poly)

# This does not produce the correct result!
In [11]: %timeit (aa * bb) % pp
100 ms ± 718 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

Linear algebra performance¶

Linear algebra performance in extension fields is definitely slower than native NumPy. This is because, unlike with prime fields, it is not possible to use the BLAS/LAPACK implementations. Instead, entirely new JIT-compiled ufuncs are generated, which are not as optimized for parallelism or hardware acceleration as BLAS/LAPACK.

Below are examples computing the matrix multiplication of two \(100 \times 100\) matrices in the binary extension field \(\mathrm{GF}(2^{32})\).

In [1]: import galois

In [2]: GF = galois.GF(2**32)

In [3]: GF.ufunc_mode
Out[3]: 'jit-calculate'

In [4]: A = GF.Random((100,100), seed=1, dtype=int)

In [5]: B = GF.Random((100,100), seed=2, dtype=int)

# Invoke the ufunc once to JIT compile it, if necessary
In [6]: A @ B
Out[6]:
GF([[4203877556, 3977035749, 2623937858, ..., 3721257849, 4250999056,
    4026271867],
    [3120760606, 1017695431, 1111117124, ..., 1638387264, 2988805996,
    1734614583],
    [2508826906, 2800993411, 1720697782, ..., 3858180318, 2521070820,
    3906771227],
    ...,
    [ 624580545,  984724090, 3969931498, ..., 1692192269,  473079794,
    1029376699],
    [1232183301,  209395954, 2659712274, ..., 2967695343, 2747874320,
    1249453570],
    [3938433735,  828783569, 3286222384, ..., 3669775257,   33626526,
    4278384359]], order=2^32)

In [7]: %timeit A @ B
3.88 ms ± 102 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)

The galois library is about ~5.5x slower than native NumPy (which isn’t computing the correct product).

In [8]: import numpy as np

In [9]: AA, BB = A.view(np.ndarray), B.view(np.ndarray)

In [10]: pp = int(GF.irreducible_poly)

# This does not produce the correct result!
In [11]: %timeit (AA @ BB) % pp
703 µs ± 1.9 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1,000 loops each)

Last update: Aug 06, 2023