Re: OS/2 Vs. Windows Mathamatica (speed).
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg2963] Re: OS/2 Vs. Windows Mathamatica (speed).
- From: groskyd at gv.ssi1.com (David Rosky)
- Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 03:08:45 -0500
- Organization: Silicon Systems, Inc.
In <4dd2p6$al at dragonfly.wri.com>, manor at ie.technion.ac.il (Raanan Manor) writes: > >Hi, >Can someone tell me if the OS/2 version of Mathamatica >will run faster then the Windows version ? > It depends a little on what kind of "speed" you are looking at. In terms of raw computational speed, which would matter the most if you are doing lengthy cpu-intensive calculations, the OS/2 version overall is faster than the windows version (see http://smc.vnet.net/mathbench.html). If your calculations are short computationally, then the speed of the user interface is what will matter to you. In this case it is a mixed bag. The OS/2 version comes with two user interfaces - the native PM interface and the windows-based notebook interface. The PM interface is basically text-based sequential input with graphical output capability and is very fast but it is somewhat limited and is not document-oriented. The windows notebook front end runs in a win-os2 session and communicates with the kernel via tcp/ip. The windows interface is fairly slow (apparently due to the tcp/ip and mathlink overhead) but is document-oriented and contains pretty good on-line help. I use both interfaces - each one is a better match to different tasks. If you are going to use the windows front end with the OS/2 kernel, I would recommend at least 16Meg of RAM and 32Meg of swap space for decent performance. I have 12Mb and the system tends to swap heavily after a certain amount of usage. > >What are the diffrences ? >Is the help system of the os/2 version more like the DEC version ? >(which is great). > The help system for the windows (win-os2) front end is pretty good and contains help for kernel commands as well as front end commands. The help for the PM interface is good as far as help for the interface is concerned, but contains no on-line help for the kernel (of course the built-in Mathematica "?" function is always available though). Regards, --David ----------------------- groskyd at gv.ssi1.com --------------------- ==== [MESSAGE SEPARATOR] ====