Re: How does Mma work on a Mac Powerbook 170?
- To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
- Subject: Re: How does Mma work on a Mac Powerbook 170?
- From: Boss Man <BOSS at noaapmel.gov>
- Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1992 10:57 PDT
Mark writes:
=========================================================================
Hi folks,
Right at the moment I'm swearing a Mma v2.0 on my (actually, Penn State's)
NeXTstation; however, despite its flaws and assuming things get fixed in
v2.1 I was thinking about springing for Mma for my (really mine) Mac
Powerbook 170 (8MB RAM, 80 MB disk). How's the performance on the Mac
relative to the NeXT? Good ol' PSU sells Mma for $319 so the 319 dollar
question is whether I should hang onto my pennies and invest in a home
NeXTstation and meanwhile come into the office in the evenings to work?
Thanks for the input,
Mark.
=========================================================================
The Powerbook 170 has a 68030 running at 25 MHz with a math coprocessor chip.
It has a 16 bit bus.
Here are some performance figures from my SE/30 which should be comparable
to the PB 170. The SE/30 has a 68030 running at 16 MHz with a math
coprocessor. I think it has a 32 bit bus. You might try running these
same commands on your NeXt station for comparison.
Oh, yes - the SE/30 has 8 MB of memory, running system 7.0.1 with
virtual memory disabled. The times are slightly longer with virtual
memory enabled.
Benchmark SE/30
no Virtual Mem
Timing[N[Pi,500];]
{1.58333 Second, Null}
Timing[Inverse[Table[Random[],{100},{100}]];]
{39.9 Second, Null}
Timing[10000!][[1]]
220.667 Second
Good luck!
Ed Boss,
NOAA/PMEL