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Re: Solid State Disk to boost Mathematica performance

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg129548] Re: Solid State Disk to boost Mathematica performance
• From: João Paulo Pereira <joaopereira9 at gmail.com>
• Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 02:40:26 -0500 (EST)
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On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 5:09 AM, Szabolcs Horv=E1t <szhorvat at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The short answer is no, it won't boost Mathematica's performance for
> most computation.
>
> The longer answer is that the Mathematica kernel doesn't need to access
> the disk a lot (unless you explicitly ask it to write/read things
> to/from disk), and its speed it mainly limited by your CPU.  Where the
> SSD will make a noticeable difference in Mathematica is browsing the
> documentation centre.  Help pages will load faster in my experience. It
> will also significantly speed up the startup of many programs and will
> reduce the boot time of your OS, so it may be a worthwhile upgrade
>
> On 2013-01-20 06:25:24 +0000, E. Mart=EDn-Serrano said:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I am thinking of installing a 256 GB Solid State Disk (SSD) on my
> machine to
> > increase its performance.
> >
> > The current configuration of my machine is:  4 cores (8 threads),  3,4
> GHz;
> > with 12 GB DD3-RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 400 (3 GB  integrated RAM)  and 4
> TB
> > Internal HD. It is not a small machine, I think.
> >
> > The Solid State Disk (SSD) would hold the operating system (Windows 8)
> and
> > Mathematica (currently v8); plus some half a dozen of other "mission
> > critical" programs.
> >
> > Anyway, the true actual candidates to reside in the SSD are Windows 8 and
> > Mathematica, but I wonder whether it is going to really boost the
> > performance of Mathematica considering that the machine already has 12
> GB of
> > RAM.
> >
> > But I do not know how Mathematica deals with the kernel and the fronted
> > (their interaction), in other words, whether the kernel uses de internal
> HD
> > to interact with the kernel and vice versa.
> >
> > I use intensively and extensively dynamics constructs, and in many
> occasions
> > the dynamic refreshing uses Solve, NSolve and, in occasions NDSolve and
> > DSolve, within the second parameter to Dynamic. In any case, with or
> without
> > solving (always small) systems of equations, moving graphical objects
> tied
> > to dynamic locators remains an unsolvable issue to me.
> >
> > In summary, my question is whether the SSD holding windows and
> Mathematica
> > would bust in any form Mathematica's performance.
> >
> > Kind regards
> >
> > E. Martin-Serrano
> >
>

Hi, please let me enter this discussion. I am thinking in buying a new
laptop and I'm planning to use Mathematica a lot. I thought having a SSD
was essential. Apparently it isn't. Some of you have suggested
some features that are important. Besides CPU speed and memory and 64 bit,
what should I be looking for in order to increase performance while running
Mathematica?

My best regards

Joao