Sub-setting symmetric matrices along the diagonal

Question

I have an 8x8 matrix, e.g. A=rand(8,8). What I need to do is subset all 2x2 matrices along the diagonal. That means that I need to save matrices A(1:2,1:2), A(3:4,3:4), A(5:6,5:6), A(7:8,7:8). To better explain myself, the current version that I am using is the following:

 AA = rand(8,8);
 BB = zeros(8,2);
 for i = 1:4
     BB(2*i-1:2*i,:) = AA(2*i-1:2*i,2*i-1:2*i);
 end

This works fine for small AA matrices and small AA submatrices, however as the size grows significantly (it can get up to even 50,000x50,000) using a for loop like the one above in not viable. Is there a way to achieve the above without the loop? I've thought of other approaches that could perhaps utilize upper and lower triangular matrices, however even these seem to need a loop at some point. Any help is appreciated!!

Answer 1

Here's a way:

AA = rand(8,8); % example matrix. Assumed square
n = 2; % submatrix size. Assumed to divide the size of A
mask = repelem(logical(eye(size(AA,1)/n)), n, n);
BB = reshape(permute(reshape(AA(mask), n, n, []), [1 3 2]), [], n);

This generates a logical mask that selects the required elements, and then rearranges them as desired using reshape and permute.