Re: Performance of student version of Mathematica?
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg692] Re: Performance of student version of Mathematica?
- From: gwesp at cosy.sbg.ac.at (Gerhard Wesp)
- Date: 10 Apr 1995 13:54:58 GMT
In article <3m55ub$gm7 at news0.cybernetics.net>, Kale Beckwitt <kaleb at uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote: >I am going to purchase the Windows version of Mathematica and I can get a >VERY good deal on the student version of the software through the store at >the student store at my university. Unfortunately, this version does not >utilize a math-co-processor. I was wondering if anyone has any experience >with this version expecially regarding how this limitation effects software >performance with large data sets. > [...] I wouldn't recommend using Mma for *really* large data sets, unless I really had too. Mathematica is quite powerful in doing symbolic math, but your problem is likely to be of numerical nature. Mma's data structures are highly dynamic, this gives it a lot of flexibility, but imposes also some performance limitations. However, if you do numerical calculations, you might experience a performance degradation of up to 90%, especially if it "doesn't utilize a math-co-processor", as you say. If you're doing linear algebra, have a look at octave, which is a frontend to LAPACK. It will be much faster than *any* symbolic math program. However, if you're doing symbmath only, the presence of a FPU shouldn't make any difference. Hope this helps! -Gerhard