Re: Mathematica 8
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg114042] Re: Mathematica 8
- From: telefunkenvf14 <rgorka at gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:35:05 -0500 (EST)
- References: <ic5i9o$3tr$1@smc.vnet.net> <ic9ljt$o3j$1@smc.vnet.net>
On Nov 20, 5:29 pm, truxton spangler <truxtonspangle... at gmail.com> wrote: > 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 h= ardware buying decisions to run Mathematica 8 optimally. > > > For those of us with an overwhelming desire to continue using Apple's M= AC OSX systems the current situation (as I understand it so far) is that Ma= thematica 8 GPU support strategy leaves behind a large installed base of In= tel 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 impro= vements. > > > So lets look for some data to support the buying decision! Using Mathem= aticaBenchmark8 with my current machine: > > > Machine Name: sydsmacbookpro > > System: MacOS X V 10.6.5 Snow Leopard (6= 4-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 Mac= Books 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 (6= 4-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 resu= lt 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 wr= iting business it is the best one can do currently with WRI tools. > > > I hope someone at WRI will recognize the importance of totally upgradin= g benchmarking to take into account support for GPUs (and address the CUDA = vs OpenCL issues) and parallelism (multi-core, multi-thread) support. Witho= ut 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 h= ardware upgrade (for me) to optimize use of Mathematica 8 would be to go Ap= ple Mac Pro with the latest nVidia GPU cards to be able to use CUDA (assumi= ng$$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??? While CUDA is supported on your card (I believe), you'll still need to download the relevant CUDA programming software! So... (1) update to the most current version of the NVIDIA drivers at nvidia.com, these will enable support for the latest version of CUDA on your card, and (2) go to the developer section of NVIDIA's website and grab the needed CUDA stuff (SDK and examples). See my other thread on CUDA and Current Laptops. -RG