[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Re: $10K Mathematica Machine

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg76970] Re: $10K Mathematica Machine
• From: Antti Penttilä@smc.vnet.net
• Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 03:16:16 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: University of Helsinki
• References: <f3gqm6$41g$1@smc.vnet.net> <f3jgf0$d5v$1@smc.vnet.net>

Hi,

With number theory computations, you probably won't be able to benefit 
from more than one CPU core. Still, buy a dual core machine since it 
will be much more stable in doing something else while you compute with 
Mathematica.

As others have pointed out, get a 64bit OS and lots of memory. I think 
that the performance of Mathematica and its libraries could be better 
with Windows or Linux OS rather than with Mac.

Number theory and Mathematica will probably need lots of integer 
computing. I would recommend you to check the best current processor for 
integer performance from 
http://www.spec.org/cgi-bin/osgresults?conf=cpu2006;op=form

Search for computers with processors less than 3 and sort by result. 
Look for the best result in CINT2006 test. At the time the best seems to 
be the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor with a score of 18.5, 
followed by a bunch of Xeon processors (e.g. Intel Xeon 5160, score 18.1).

Antti