Stata/MP is faster — much faster

Everyone knows that computers now come with multiple cores. Basically, every computer processor now has several cores integrated on it. Even most phones now have multicore processors.

Everyone also knows that Stata has superb support for multicore computers. The multicore version of Stata—Stata/MP—runs over half of Stata’s estimation commands at least 1.8 times faster on dual-core machines, at least 2.8 times faster on quad-core machines, and at least 4 times faster on computers with 8 cores. You don’t have to do anything to your commands or your do-files. Everything works just as it does in every other version of Stata, it just works faster. Even estimators and other features performed from dialog boxes run faster.

Not everyone knows that these performance benefits are not automatic. Stata/MP has its own versions of key computational code to efficiently distribute computations across multiple cores. Sometimes, this is impossible, meaning some algorithms cannot be made faster.

If you want to know just how fast Stata/MP runs the things you do frequently, we have the answer. Every estimator and data management facility in Stata is analyzed in the updated Stata/MP white paper. We even include a section on Mata, which is highly parallelized—that is to say, much faster on Stata/MP.

Take a look at the white paper for detailed information on the speed improvement offered by Stata/MP.