Re: Does Mathematica run on HP-UX (Itanium) ?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg64914] Re: Does Mathematica run on HP-UX (Itanium) ?
- From: "Dave (from the UK)" <see-my-signature at southminster-branch-line.org.uk>
- Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 06:12:17 -0500 (EST)
- References: <dtu2ph$f03$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Reply-to: Mar-2006 at southminster-branch-line.org.uk
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Dave (from the UK) wrote: > According to the Wolfram site > > http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/platforms/ > > Mathematica 5.2 runs on HP-UX with the PA-RISC processor. > > But if you had an Itanium box (specifically zx2000) running HP-UX would > it run? I'm led to believe HP-UX on 64-bit Itanium has a binary > compatabiltiy layer which allows binaries for PA-RISC to run. See: > > http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2003/030519a.html > > where it states: > > "Additionally, moving to a new architecture usually creates numerous > compatibility challenges and often forces customers to leave behind > application software that they value. HP has addressed this issue nicely > with HP-UX 11i v2 for Itanium processor-based systems, which offers near > functional equality and binary compatibility to HP-UX 11i v1 for PA-RISC." > > If anyone does run Mathematica on the HP-UX operating system on the > Itanium processor, what is the performance like? I have no idea how much > this binary compatability impacts performance. If the Itanium emulates > all the PC-RISC instructions, I suspect it runs slower than on the older > PA-RISC chip, despite the much higher peformance of Itanium. > > I know Mathematica runs on Linux on Itanium, but that is not an option, > for other reasons, so I am just interested if it runs on HP-UX with the > Itanium processor > I have now found the answer to this, so I thought I'd post it. Someone else has tested it and found that yet is does run on HP-UX 11i on Itanium, but the performance is pretty poor. For the *very* limited testing that has been done, it would appear one would not want to a buy an Itanium machine with HP-UX to run Mathematica. A very slightly modified version of the benchmark at http://smc.vnet.net/timings50.html was used. The only mods were to remove the notebook bits, so it run on the command line. Testing on a couple of Sun showed negligible difference between the modified and unmodified benchmark, so you can take those scores as being reasonable representative. Scores were 1) zx200O Itanium running Linux. Version = 5.2 for Linux IA-64 (June 21, 2005) Times = {3.4043, 3.15332, 4.02442, 12.6035, 7.50391, 2.97754, 12.0498, 24.375, 47.1485, 23.7686, 65.9424, 8.95899, 15.2725, 17.9746, 26.1943} Total Kernel Time = 275.352, Total Time = 275.4 Benchmark = 1.86003 And on the same machine running HP-UX 11i, rather than Linux. In this case, HP-UX is emulating a PA-RISC processor. Version = 5.2 for HP-UX PA-RISC (64 bit) (June 21, 2005) Times = {43.2, 33.15, 48.42, 57.3, 97.97, 31.08, 51.22, 550.63, 277.15, 101.79, 181.01, 37.56, 68.52, 107.57, 104.59} Total Kernel Time = 1791.16, Total Time = 1815. Benchmark = 0.265283 As you can see, it is a factor of 1.86003/0.265283= 7 x slower when run on an emulation mode. -- Dave K Minefield Consultant and Solitaire Expert (MCSE). Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam. It is always of the form: month-year@domain. Hitting reply will work for a couple of months only. Later set it manually.