Rendering plots with millions of values is expensive. Before this fix
we wrote all values into CSV files. The CSV files were then read by
Gnuplot that did the rendering. But in an image with n×m pixes there
can only be nm different values. In most realistic scenarios we will
have many values that will be drawn to the same pixels. So we are
wasting time yb first generation the CSV for too many values and then
by parsing that CSV again.
Fixed by using a sparse 2D array to de-duplicate many values before
they get written to the CSV. The additional time we spend de-duplicating
is often smaller than the time saved when writing the CSV, so that the
total CSV writing is about as 'fast' as before (sometimes a little
faster, sometimes a little slower). But the time Gnuplot needs for
rendering drastically reduces. The factor depends on the data, of
course. We have seen factor 50 for realistic examples. Making a 15s
job run in 300ms.
Andreas Huber
d895eba47c