Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
Re: Platform recommendation/tradeoffs? TIME_TEST
There is an IDL routine, called TIME_TEST, which I have used to compare IDL running on 6 different (Unix) CPUs here in my department, and it was very convenient. I made a color plot of the results, which showed that my machine was one of the slowest ones, and will use that to justify a CPU upgrade to my SPARC LX...! [ You should have seen the DEC Alpha OSF ] It is easy to do if you already have access to one of the machines which you are curious about. I agree that a compounded list of many different machines all together would be a nice reference. P.S. Anyone running or considering running IDL on a PowerMac should go get the free extension for speeding up floating point operations. It made a 20% improvement in our Mac's speed running most scientific applications. The Mac is now faster than my SPARC on many operations. Thanks go to Fred: > You might get a higher speed on the PowerMac if you would install > a new floating point math library (made by Apple). It's called MathLib. > Ask or read about it in a comp.sys.mac.* newsgroup. (I don't know the > details as I don't have a PowerMac. The only thing I do know is that > the MathLib in ROM is ``slow'' when it comes to transcendental functions... > The software patch, i.e., the MathLib extension, solves the speed problem.) > > Good luck, > Fred. (walsteyn@fys.ruu.nl) / Russ Welti /-\ (c-g) University of Washington \-/ Molecular Biotechnology / PO Box 352145 /-\ Seattle, WA 98195 (a-t) rwelti@u.washington.edu \-/ (206) 685 3840 voice (206) 685 7344 FAX / http://chroma.mbt.washington.edu/graphics/gif/russ.gif