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PERF: Defer tick materialization during Axes init/clear#31525

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eendebakpt wants to merge 9 commits intomatplotlib:mainfrom
eendebakpt:perf/lazy-axis-init
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PERF: Defer tick materialization during Axes init/clear#31525
eendebakpt wants to merge 9 commits intomatplotlib:mainfrom
eendebakpt:perf/lazy-axis-init

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@eendebakpt eendebakpt commented Apr 18, 2026

PR summary

The performance if matplotlibs ticks is a bottleneck in various plots. See for example the discussions and references in #5665, #31012, #29594.

In this PR we prevent materialization of the _LazyTickList when there are no ticks created yet. With the tick-materialization cascade gone from Axes.__clear, the spine transforms the cascade used to install as a side effect are installed explicitly at the end of __clear.

Benchmark results (updated):

nit_grid 8x8:                  [main] 177 ms ± 2 ms   -> [branch] 112 ms ± 24 ms:  1.58x faster
clear_grid 8x8:                 [main] 181 ms ± 2 ms   -> [branch] 139 ms ± 22 ms:  1.31x faster
reuse_axes 8x8:                 [main] 154 ms ± 1 ms   -> [branch] 53.8 ms ± 0.4 ms: 2.86x faster
fig100 clear+plot1000+legend:   [main] 9.45 ms ± 2.4 ms -> [branch] 3.28 ms ± 0.02 ms: 2.88x faster

Geometric mean: 2.03x faster
Benchmark script
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.10"
# dependencies = ['matplotlib', 'numpy', 'pyperf']
# ///
"""pyperf micro-benchmarks for matplotlib axis/tick init+clear cost.

"""
import pyperf

setup = """
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("Agg")
# matplotlib.use("QtAgg")  # snap/glibc mismatch; use offscreen:
# import os; os.environ.setdefault("QT_QPA_PLATFORM", "offscreen")

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

GRID = 8
rng = np.random.default_rng(0)
x1000 = np.arange(1000)
y1000 = rng.standard_normal(1000)

# Pre-create reusable figure for clear_grid / reuse_axes cases.
_fig_clear = plt.figure()
_fig_grid, _axs_grid = plt.subplots(GRID, GRID)
_axs_flat = _axs_grid.ravel()

# Warmup — first call pays font-cache / backend-init costs.
plt.close(plt.subplots(GRID, GRID)[0])
"""

runner = pyperf.Runner()

# Fresh figure each iter — full Axes.__init__ cost for an 8x8 grid.
runner.timeit(
    name="init_grid 8x8",
    stmt="fig, axs = plt.subplots(GRID, GRID); plt.close(fig)",
    setup=setup,
)

# Reuse one Figure, clear + re-populate with an 8x8 grid.
runner.timeit(
    name="clear_grid 8x8",
    stmt="_fig_clear.clear(); _fig_clear.subplots(GRID, GRID)",
    setup=setup,
)

# Iterate ax.clear() across an existing 8x8 grid.
runner.timeit(
    name="reuse_axes 8x8",
    stmt="[ax.clear() for ax in _axs_flat]",
    setup=setup,
)

# Figure num=100: clear + plot 1000-point line + legend. Reuses the same
# numbered figure across iterations so only clear+plot+legend is measured.
runner.timeit(
    name="fig100 clear+plot1000+legend",
    stmt=(
        "fig = plt.figure(num=100);"
        " fig.clear();"
        " ax = fig.add_subplot();"
        " ax.plot(x1000, y1000, label='y');"
        " ax.legend()"
    ),
    setup=setup,
)

Closes #23771.

AI Disclosure

Claude was used in identifying performance bottlenecks related to tick creation. Initially the goal was to create tick collections (as described in one of the references), but this approach seems to be a small change with large impact.

PR checklist

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
@eendebakpt eendebakpt force-pushed the perf/lazy-axis-init branch from 5708dc8 to 3ac8224 Compare April 18, 2026 12:21
@eendebakpt eendebakpt marked this pull request as ready for review April 18, 2026 16:06
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@timhoffm timhoffm left a comment

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Thanks for the PR. The speedup is impressive, and the added complexity (rc caching) is bearable.

Strategically, I would like to move away from single-tick handling, but in the mean time this is a reasonable improvement.

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Strategically, I would like to move away from single-tick handling, but in the mean time this is a reasonable improvement.

Having tick collections is indeed the way to go. This change is orthogonal as it avoids some tick operations altogether. (but maybe if ticks are really fast that would not matter)

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eendebakpt and others added 3 commits April 23, 2026 21:36
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
@eendebakpt eendebakpt force-pushed the perf/lazy-axis-init branch from a3f1be1 to d0ed04c Compare April 23, 2026 19:38
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Thanks, this is a substantial and concise improvement now!

@eendebakpt
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Thanks, this is a substantial and concise improvement now!

Thanks for reviews! This was (and still is) tricky to get right. If you have more suggestions (in particular for additional tests) let me know

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[Bug]: matplotlib.pyplot.clf is very slow

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