Re: [MacPerl] MacPERL Performace vs. Intel Class systems

[bradley@aux.marc.usda.gov (Randy Bradley)]

>You all have correctly identified file system performance as the bottleneck.
>

  I guess all of you cannot be wrong.  However, I'm not so easy to
convince.    I do think that the file system on Mac is geared toward
binary/block IO and can suffer greatly doing text IO, depending on the
compiler/intrepreter.  I have not looked at the source of MacPERL an I know
many of you are intimate with the source.  If you say it cannot go faster,
I'm sure that is the case ;-)

  However, consider the following code:

/*
 *  TestIO for the CodeWarrior
 *
 */

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

void main(void)
{
        int i;
        time_t starttime,stoptime;
        FILE *out=fopen( "ctest.dat", "w" );

        if ( !out ) {
                printf ("Can't open ctest.dat\n");
                return;
                }

        printf ("Starting\n");
        time( &starttime);

        for( i=1; i <= 100000; i++) {
                fprintf( out, "%d\n", i);
                }

        time( &stoptime);


        printf ("%d Seconds elapsed time\n", stoptime-starttime);

}

This program creates the same file and runs in from 1 to 2 seconds on my
PowerPC 8100/100.  Peter's Perl scripts takes 25 seconds to create the same
file. (MacPerl 5.0.7r1m)  If the MacOS filesystem is the bottleneck, why is
there an order of magnitude difference?

Here is some more food for thought:

  Just as an example, (not a bench mark by any means), I downloaded jdk1.1
( ~8.8MB) for windows on my Mac.  I wanted to get it to an NT box by the
easiest path.  We have a Solbourne SMP box running CAP, so I just dragged
the icon for the .exe file over.  The copy took about 1 minute from my
8100/100.  Then I went to the NT box (200 Mhz) and tried MS-IE to FTP it.
It was taking a long time so I aborted it after 5 minutes and tried
Netscape.  IT took 6 minutes to ftp it. Now I'm thinking something must be
very wrong because everybody says NT is so fast.  Netscape on the 8100/100
Mac took only 3 minutes to ftp it.  Again I tried the drag copy.  Only took
1 minute. Before reading this discussion, I attributed the difference on
scsi vs ide.  Just for fun, I transfered the same file by ftp from one DEC
alpha to another.  5 seconds :-)  So I knew the net itself wasn't the
bottle-neck, however, the NIC card on the NT vs the built in ethernet on
the Mac could be.


Regards,

Randy


******************************************************************************
Randy Bradley | Systems Analyst | US Meat Animal Research Center | Clay Center
Computer Spec.| 402-762-4156    | bradley@aux.marc.usda.gov      | Nebraska
******************************************************************************
"Around it!  Around it!  Confoundit.  Nobody gave me the specifications.  I
have to do everything myself around here."  Gopher-The Great Honeypot Robbery
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