--- title: "Performance benefit by using compiled model definitions in mkin" author: "Johannes Ranke" output: html_document: toc: true toc_float: true code_folding: show fig_retina: null date: "`r Sys.Date()`" vignette: > %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown} %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8} --- ```{r, include = FALSE} library(knitr) opts_chunk$set(tidy = FALSE, cache = FALSE) ``` ## How to benefit from compiled models When using an mkin version equal to or greater than 0.9-36 and a C compiler is available, you will see a message that the model is being compiled from autogenerated C code when defining a model using mkinmod. Starting from version 0.9.49.9, the `mkinmod()` function checks for presence of a compiler using ```{r check_gcc, eval = FALSE} pkgbuild::has_compiler() ``` In previous versions, it used `Sys.which("gcc")` for this check. On Linux, you need to have the essential build tools like make and gcc or clang installed. On Debian based linux distributions, these will be pulled in by installing the build-essential package. On MacOS, which I do not use personally, I have had reports that a compiler is available by default. On Windows, you need to install Rtools and have the path to its bin directory in your PATH variable. You do not need to modify the PATH variable when installing Rtools. Instead, I would recommend to put the line ```{r Rprofile, eval = FALSE} Sys.setenv(PATH = paste("C:/Rtools/bin", Sys.getenv("PATH"), sep=";")) ``` into your .Rprofile startup file. This is just a text file with some R code that is executed when your R session starts. It has to be named .Rprofile and has to be located in your home directory, which will generally be your Documents folder. You can check the location of the home directory used by R by issuing ```{r HOME, eval = FALSE} Sys.getenv("HOME") ``` ## Comparison with Eigenvalue based solutions First, we build a simple degradation model for a parent compound with one metabolite. ```{r create_SFO_SFO} library("mkin", quietly = TRUE) SFO_SFO <- mkinmod( parent = mkinsub("SFO", "m1"), m1 = mkinsub("SFO")) ``` We can compare the performance of the Eigenvalue based solution against the compiled version and the R implementation of the differential equations using the benchmark package. In the output of below code, the warnings about zero being removed from the FOCUS D dataset are suppressed. ```{r benchmark_SFO_SFO, fig.height = 3, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE} if (require(rbenchmark)) { b.1 <- benchmark( "deSolve, not compiled" = mkinfit(SFO_SFO, FOCUS_2006_D, solution_type = "deSolve", use_compiled = FALSE, quiet = TRUE), "Eigenvalue based" = mkinfit(SFO_SFO, FOCUS_2006_D, solution_type = "eigen", quiet = TRUE), "deSolve, compiled" = mkinfit(SFO_SFO, FOCUS_2006_D, solution_type = "deSolve", quiet = TRUE), replications = 3) print(b.1) factor_SFO_SFO <- round(b.1["1", "relative"]) } else { factor_SFO_SFO <- NA print("R package rbenchmark is not available") } ``` We see that using the compiled model is by a factor of around `r factor_SFO_SFO` faster than using the R version with the default ode solver, and it is even faster than the Eigenvalue based solution implemented in R which does not need iterative solution of the ODEs. ## Model that can not be solved with Eigenvalues This evaluation is also taken from the example section of mkinfit. ```{r benchmark_FOMC_SFO, fig.height = 3, warning = FALSE} if (require(rbenchmark)) { FOMC_SFO <- mkinmod( parent = mkinsub("FOMC", "m1"), m1 = mkinsub( "SFO")) b.2 <- benchmark( "deSolve, not compiled" = mkinfit(FOMC_SFO, FOCUS_2006_D, use_compiled = FALSE, quiet = TRUE), "deSolve, compiled" = mkinfit(FOMC_SFO, FOCUS_2006_D, quiet = TRUE), replications = 3) print(b.2) factor_FOMC_SFO <- round(b.2["1", "relative"]) } else { factor_FOMC_SFO <- NA print("R package benchmark is not available") } ``` Here we get a performance benefit of a factor of `r factor_FOMC_SFO` using the version of the differential equation model compiled from C code! This vignette was built with mkin `r utils::packageVersion("mkin")` on ```{r sessionInfo, echo = FALSE} cat(utils::capture.output(utils::sessionInfo())[1:3], sep = "\n") if(!inherits(try(cpuinfo <- readLines("/proc/cpuinfo")), "try-error")) { cat(gsub("model name\t: ", "CPU model: ", cpuinfo[grep("model name", cpuinfo)[1]])) } ```