[SWLUG] how much more CPU performance can one get these days?

[Mark Summerfield]

On 2009-09-18, Justin Mitchell wrote:
[snip]
> well an important thing to determine is if thats 100% of one core, or of
> all cores.
> 
> in top press '1' to switch the view to list the cores separately, if its
> only maxing out one core then it isnt threaded and more cores isnt going
> to help.

OK, that revealed that it is only using one core, so no threading.

> in which case i would imagine (im no expert) that the thing to
> concentrate on is getting the highest performance of one core, either
> through usign a single core chip, or a dualcore that has better speed
> per core.
>
> also probably looking to make sure your getting the best possible RAM
> speed performance, i believe there are certain chipsets that use dimms
> in pairs or triples to get faster access, so that and the speed of the
> ram, will probably make a significant difference when crunching lots of
> numbers.
> 
> also make sure that the process isnt starved for memory, use something
> like vmstat to make sure theres no significant swapping happening, as
> that would be a slowdown and easily fixed with more ram.

I get (meaningless to me):

: vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----
cpu------
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id 
wa st
 1  0 296960 1093356  13792 223880   14   21   198   184  635  611 23  4 68  
4  0	
: vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----
cpu------
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id 
wa st
 1  0 296940 1024868  13832 223960   14   21   198   184  635  611 24  4 68  
4  0	
: vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----
cpu------
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id 
wa st
 1  0 296936 1010496  13856 223960   14   21   197   184  635  611 24  4 68  
4  0
 
> but if it really is a single threaded algorithm then it just really isnt
> going to scale all that well on consumer hardware.

OK, well I only do this twice a year on average, so I guess I'll have to
live with it.

Thanks for the info.


-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd, www.qtrac.eu
    C++, Python, Qt, PyQt - training and consultancy
        "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4" - ISBN 0132354160