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Stata 8 is even faster

Stata 8 executes programming commands in half the time of Stata 7, on average. This results in commands implemented as ado-files running 17 to 43% faster.

  • This increase in speed is due to a new, faster memory manager that reduces the time needed to find, access, and store results. Thus, the improvement only slightly affects the time to run built-in, heavily computational commands. regress, for instance, runs only 1.43% faster. Nevertheless, the effect can be marked on other commands. poisson runs up to 31% faster, and heckman runs up to 43% faster. The larger the dataset, the less the improvement will be: for example, heckman runs 17% faster on 4,000 observations.

  • That statistical commands run faster is a happy side effect. The big advantage of the increased speed is that it allows some problems to be approached using ado-files that previously would have required internal code, such as Stata's new graphics, which are implemented as an ado-file! Some programming commands run up to 4 times faster. Implementing features as ado-files is part of the effort to keep Stata open to and extendable by users.