Fastest python implementation of multiplication table
About 352 times faster, according to the benchmark code

(on my machine)  Python 2.7

Exactly how much faster it is will vary widely between machines. I tested it on my web server also and there it was only 288 times as fast. 

import itertools as i, operator as o

def multable(width, m={}):
   if not width in m.keys():
      m[width] = '\n'.join(['%4d'*width]*width)%tuple(i.starmap(o.mul,i.product(range(1,width+1),repeat=2)))
   return m[width]


The actual algorithm is only about 1.25 times as fast as the reference one, but if you have a function which is called often, caching the result saves a lot of time.