Re: Mathematica 8
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg114035] Re: Mathematica 8
- From: truxton spangler <truxtonspangler29 at gmail.com>
- Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2010 18:29:00 -0500 (EST)
- References: <ic5i9o$3tr$1@smc.vnet.net>
On Nov 19, 9:07 pm, Syd Geraghty <sydgerag... at me.com> wrote: > Murray, > > I second your call for discussion which could lead to better informed hardware buying decisions to run Mathematica 8 optimally. > > For those of us with an overwhelming desire to continue using Apple's MAC OSX systems the current situation (as I understand it so far) is that Mathematica 8 GPU support strategy leaves behind a large installed base of Intel Mac systems built until very recently when MacBooks switched to nVidia GPUs and iMacs used the more recent ATI GPUs (ATI Radeon HD 4670, HD 5670 & HD 5750). > > The wonderful part of Mathematica 8 strategy is the terrific incentive for one to buy some new hardware with (one hopes) scintillating speed improvements. > > So lets look for some data to support the buying decision! Using MathematicaBenchmark8 with my current machine: > > Machine Name: sydsmacbookpro > System: MacOS X V 10.6.5 Snow Leopard (64-bit) > Date: November 15, 2010 > Mathematica Version: 8.0.0 > Benchmark Result: 0.41 > > Compare this to the current overall best and the Apple system best: > > 3.07 GHz Core i7-950 (8 Cores) 1.00 > Windows 7 Pro (64-bit) Desktop > > 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo E8435 (2 Cores) 0.73 > iMac OS X Snow Leopard (64-bit) Desktop > > 2 * 2.26 GHz Quad Core Xeon E5520 (8 Cores) 0.69 > Mac XServe OS X (64-bit) Server > > The interesting fact is if I set up Mathematica 8 to use both of my MacBooks cores to I get a 61% MathematicaBenchmark8 improvement (an impressive result). > > Machine Name: 2-node homogeneous cluster > System: MacOS X V 10.6.5 Snow Leopard (64-bit) > Date: November 15, 2010 > Mathematica Version: 8.0.0 > Benchmark Result: 0.66 > > Note that Mathematica assigned the name "2-node homogeneous cluster" to my "parallel MacBook". > > So the disappointing first comparison from my current system (best result of .66 using Mathematica 8 to the best MathematicaBenchmark8 result of 1.0) apparently limits my available upgrade in performance to 52%. > > Now this is clearly nonsense. But without getting into the benchmark writing business it is the best one can do currently with WRI tools. > > I hope someone at WRI will recognize the importance of totally upgrading benchmarking to take into account support for GPUs (and address the CUDA vs OpenCL issues) and parallelism (multi-core, multi-thread) support. Without a serious benchmark upgrade I fear the general discussion will not lead to actionable information. > > My current conclusion with Apple products is that the best and safest hardware upgrade (for me) to optimize use of Mathematica 8 would be to go Apple Mac Pro with the latest nVidia GPU cards to be able to use CUDA (assuming$$s unconstrained). > Syd I have a one month old Macbook Pro with an Nvidia GPU but CUDAlink doesn't seem to like this particular card (the standard GPU shipping with this model mac, GeForce 320M) In= CUDAQ[] Out:= False So it looks like this must work only on selected nvidia cards???