Performance Problem
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg15370] Performance Problem
- From: "Hermann Meier" <hmeier at webshuttle.ch>
- Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 23:58:25 -0500
- Organization: EUnet AG
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
A benchmark for Mathematica is available at http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~stst/mathsteph2.htm. I tried to assess the performance of the following system: Dual-Pentium II 450 MHz, ASUS P2B-D/P2B-DS AGP Mainboard, 512 kB Cache, 256 MB RAM, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation / SP 3; Mathematica 3.0.1, latest MathKernel.exe - file (appr. 50 kB) from http://www.wolfram.com/support/systems/Windows/OutOfMemory.html My computer had no other relevant workload. The benchmark site has (amongst others) results for a system with one Pentium II 400 MHz. Apart from that, this system has the same specifications, and the same version of Mathematica is running. Results for integer computations, floating point computations and symbolic computations were not suprising: My system had a slight performance edge. But when computing and rendering graphics, a severe performance problem showed up. My system may be completely out of order, but I cannot see why. It took my system no less than 34.7 sec (!!) to render the Koch snowflake; the other system finished in 13.8 sec. The results for the Klein bottle were less pronounced: 19.7 sec on my computer, 15.9 sec on the other system. Results for the last graphics benchmark (three pipes) were normal. I tried to look closer into the problem: - The special driver for my graphics card was disabled (booting in VGA-mode): No effect. - One CPU was disabled (/onecpu in boot.ini): Snowflake 34.7 sec, Klein bottle 24.8 sec. - $RecursionLimit was set to Infinity: No effect. - Page Faults/sec were very high, but the maximum (8000) occured during the computation of three pipes (that gave inconspicuous results). - Pages/sec (=disk activity) was zero for Snowflake and very low (max < 30) for Klein bottle; so nearly all page faults were "soft". - Cache Faults/sec were lowest (Max <= 4) when rendering Snowflake. I am at my wit's end and would appreciate expert advice. - Thank you in advance ! Hermann Meier hmeier at webshuttle.ch