itertools.product slower than nested for loops

Question

I am trying using the itertools.product function to make a segment of my code (in an isotopic pattern simulator) easier to read and hopefully faster as well (the documentation states that no intermediate results are created) , I have however tested both versions of the code against each other using the cProfiling library and noticed that the itertools.product was significantly slower than my nested for loops.

Example values used for the testing:

carbons = [(0.0, 0.004613223957020534), (1.00335, 0.02494768843632857), (2.0067, 0.0673219412049374), (3.0100499999999997, 0.12087054681917497), (4.0134, 0.16243239687902825), (5.01675, 0.17427700732161705), (6.020099999999999, 0.15550695260604208), (7.0234499999999995, 0.11869556397525197), (8.0268, 0.07911287899598853), (9.030149999999999, 0.04677626606764402)]
hydrogens = [(0.0, 0.9417611429667746), (1.00628, 0.05651245007201512)]
nitrogens = [(0.0, 0.16148864310897554), (0.99703, 0.2949830688288726), (1.99406, 0.26887643366755537), (2.99109, 0.16305943261399866), (3.98812, 0.0740163089529218), (4.98515, 0.026824040474519875), (5.98218, 0.008084687617425748)]
oxygens17 = [(0.0, 0.8269292736927519), (1.00422, 0.15717628899143962), (2.00844, 0.014907548827832968)]
oxygens18 = [(0.0, 0.3584191873916266), (2.00425, 0.36813434247849824), (4.0085, 0.18867830334103902), (6.01275, 0.06433912182670033), (8.017, 0.016421642936302827)]
sulfurs33 = [(0.0, 0.02204843659673093), (0.99939, 0.08442569434459646), (1.99878, 0.16131398792444965), (2.99817, 0.2050722764666321), (3.99756, 0.1951327596407101), (4.99695, 0.14824112268069747), (5.99634, 0.09365899226198841), (6.99573, 0.050618028523695714), (7.99512, 0.023888506307006133), (8.99451, 0.010000884811585533)]
sulfurs34 = [(0.0, 3.0106350597190195e-10), (1.9958, 6.747270089956428e-09), (3.9916, 7.54568412614702e-08), (5.9874, 5.614443102700176e-07), (7.9832, 3.1268212758750728e-06), (9.979, 1.3903197959791067e-05), (11.9748, 5.141248916434075e-05), (13.970600000000001, 0.0001626288218672788), (15.9664, 0.00044921518047309414), (17.9622, 0.0011007203440032396)]
sulfurs36 = [(0.0, 0.904828368500412), (3.99501, 0.0905009370374487)]

Snippet demonstrating nested for loops:

totals = []
for i in carbons:
    for j in hydrogens:
        for k in nitrogens:
            for l in oxygens17:
                for m in oxygens18:
                    for n in sulfurs33:
                        for o in sulfurs34:
                            for p in sulfurs36:
                                totals.append((i[0]+j[0]+k[0]+l[0]+m[0]+n[0]+o[0]+p[0], i[1]*j[1]*k[1]*l[1]*m[1]*n[1]*o[1]*p[1]))

Snippet demonstrating the use of itertools.product:

totals = []
for i in itertools.product(carbons,hydrogens,nitrogens,oxygens17,oxygens18,sulfurs33,sulfurs34,sulfurs36):
    massDiff = i[0][0]
    chance = i[0][1]
    for j in i[1:]:
        massDiff += j[0]
        chance = chance * j[1]
    totals.append((massDiff,chance))

The results from profiling (based on 10 runs per method) was an average of ~0.8 seconds for the nested for loop approach and ~1.3 seconds for the itertools.product approach. My question is thus, am I using the itertools.product function wrongly or should I just stick to the nested for loops?

-- UPDATE --

I have included two of my cProfile results:

# ITERTOOLS.PRODUCT APPROACH 
420003 function calls in 1.306 seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.018    0.018    1.306    1.306 <string>:1(<module>)
        1    1.246    1.246    1.289    1.289 IsotopeBas.py:64(option1)
   420000    0.042    0.000    0.042    0.000 {method 'append' of 'list' objects}
        1    0.000    0.000    0.000    0.000 {method 'disable' of '_lsprof.Profiler' objects}

and:

# NESTED FOR LOOP APPROACH
420003 function calls in 0.830 seconds

   Ordered by: standard name

   ncalls  tottime  percall  cumtime  percall filename:lineno(function)
        1    0.019    0.019    0.830    0.830 <string>:1(<module>)
        1    0.769    0.769    0.811    0.811 IsotopeBas.py:78(option2)
   420000    0.042    0.000    0.042    0.000 {method 'append' of 'list' objects}
        1    0.000    0.000    0.000    0.000 {method 'disable' of '_lsprof.Profiler' objects}

Answer 1

Your original itertool code spent a lot extra time in the needless lambda, and building lists of intermediate values by hand - a lot of this can be replaced with builtin functionality.

Now, the inner for loop does add quite a lot extra overhead: just try the following and the performance is very much on par with your original code:

for a in itertools.product(carbons,hydrogens,nitrogens,oxygens17,
                           oxygens18,sulfurs33,sulfurs34,sulfurs36):
    i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p = a
    totals.append((i[0]+j[0]+k[0]+l[0]+m[0]+n[0]+o[0]+p[0],
                   i[1]*j[1]*k[1]*l[1]*m[1]*n[1]*o[1]*p[1]))

---

The following code runs as much as possible in the CPython builtin side, and I tested it to be equivalent to with code. Notably the code uses zip(*iterable) to unzip each of the product results; then uses the reduce with operator.mul for product, and sum for summing; 2 generators for going through the lists. The for loop still beats slightly, but being hardcoded it probably is not what you can use in the long run.

import itertools
from operator import mul
from functools import partial

prod = partial(reduce, mul)
elems = carbons, hydrogens, nitrogens, oxygens17, oxygens18, sulfurs33, sulfurs34, sulfurs36
p = itertools.product(*elems)

totals = [
    ( sum(massdiffs), prod(chances) )
    for massdiffs, chances in
    ( zip(*i) for i in p )
]

Answer 2

I timed these two functions, which use the absolute minimum of extra code:

def nested_for(first_iter, second_iter):
    for i in first_iter:
        for j in second_iter:
            pass

def using_product(first_iter, second_iter):
    for i in product(first_iter, second_iter):
        pass

Their bytecode instructions are similar:

dis(nested_for)
  2           0 SETUP_LOOP              26 (to 28)
              2 LOAD_FAST                0 (first_iter)
              4 GET_ITER
        >>    6 FOR_ITER                18 (to 26)
              8 STORE_FAST               2 (i)

  3          10 SETUP_LOOP              12 (to 24)
             12 LOAD_FAST                1 (second_iter)
             14 GET_ITER
        >>   16 FOR_ITER                 4 (to 22)
             18 STORE_FAST               3 (j)

  4          20 JUMP_ABSOLUTE           16
        >>   22 POP_BLOCK
        >>   24 JUMP_ABSOLUTE            6
        >>   26 POP_BLOCK
        >>   28 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
             30 RETURN_VALUE

dis(using_product)
  2           0 SETUP_LOOP              18 (to 20)
              2 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (product)
              4 LOAD_FAST                0 (first_iter)
              6 LOAD_FAST                1 (second_iter)
              8 CALL_FUNCTION            2
             10 GET_ITER
        >>   12 FOR_ITER                 4 (to 18)
             14 STORE_FAST               2 (i)

  3          16 JUMP_ABSOLUTE           12
        >>   18 POP_BLOCK
        >>   20 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
             22 RETURN_VALUE

And here are the results:

>>> timer = partial(timeit, number=1000, globals=globals())
>>> timer("nested_for(range(100), range(100))")
0.1294467518782625
>>> timer("using_product(range(100), range(100))")
0.4335527486212385

The results of additional tests performed via timeit and manual use of perf_counter were consistent with those above. Using product is clearly substantially slower than the use of nested for loops. However, based on the tests already displayed in previous answers, the discrepancy between the two approaches is inversely proportional to the number of nested loops (and, of course, the size of the tuple containing the Cartesian product).