Save MAT files more quickly

Saves large numeric arrays more quickly than Matlab's built-in save command

Description

When working with large arrays, Matlab's 'save' command can be very slow, presumably because Matlab attempts to use compression. This function provides a much faster alternative, at the cost of larger files. It only improves speed for variables that are plain arrays; elements of structures or cell arrays are not altered.

Example:
% First make some data
>> ops = struct('algorithm', 'greedy');
>> A = int32(randi(20, 1000, 1200, 40));
>> B = randn(500, 1800, 60);
% Now save it
>> tic; save /tmp/test ops A B; toc
Elapsed time is 22.980294 seconds.
>> tic; savefast /tmp/test ops A B; toc
Elapsed time is 0.571098 seconds.

Happy saving!

• Required Products: MATLAB
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 8.0 (R2012b)

[Tim Holy]

Hi Jeremy,

Your performance benefit will depend a lot on your hard drive configuration. In my case I was writing to an SSD RAID. But on my laptop (with a single SSD) I can write in about 2.1 sec, which is still a 10x benefit. What kind of performance benefit are you getting?

[Jeremy]

I am not seeing anywhere close to that save time using your A,B,ops sample. I'm running 2012b.

Your example is showing that you saved ~600MB in .57 sec. That seems a bit suspect as it is over 1GB/sec.

[Robin]

 

[Chien-Tung Hsu]