Solid State Disk to boost Mathematica performance

[E. Martín-Serrano]

Hi all,

I am thinking of installing a 256 GB Solid State Disk (SSD) on my machine to
increase its performance.

The current configuration of my machine is: 4 cores (8 threads), 3,4 GHz;
with 12 GB DD3-RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 400 (3 GB integrated RAM) and 4 TB
Internal HD. It is not a small machine, I think.

The Solid State Disk (SSD) would hold the operating system (Windows 8) and
Mathematica (currently v8); plus some half a dozen of other "mission
critical" programs.

Anyway, the true actual candidates to reside in the SSD are Windows 8 and
Mathematica, but I wonder whether it is going to really boost the
performance of Mathematica considering that the machine already has 12 GB of
RAM.

But I do not know how Mathematica deals with the kernel and the fronted
(their interaction), in other words, whether the kernel uses de internal HD
to interact with the kernel and vice versa.

I use intensively and extensively dynamics constructs, and in many occasions
the dynamic refreshing uses Solve, NSolve and, in occasions NDSolve and
DSolve, within the second parameter to Dynamic. In any case, with or without
solving (always small) systems of equations, moving graphical objects tied
to dynamic locators remains an unsolvable issue to me.

In summary, my question is whether the SSD holding windows and Mathematica
would bust in any form Mathematica's performance.

Kind regards

E. Martin-Serrano


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[Bill Rowe]

On 1/20/13 at 1:21 AM, eMartin...@telefonica.net (E.

Mart=C3=ADn-Serrano) wrote:

>I am thinking of installing a 256 GB Solid State Disk (SSD) on my
>machine to increase its performance.

>Anyway, the true actual candidates to reside in the SSD are Windows
>8 and Mathematica, but I wonder whether it is going to really boost
>the performance of Mathematica considering that the machine already
>has 12 GB of RAM.

Likely replacing your hard drive with a SSD will have no effect
on the performance of Mathematica. Where it should improve
performance is cases where Mathematica needs to read/write data
to the hard drive/SSD. I would guess for most of what you do
Mathematica performance it bound by CPU and memory rather than I/O.

Also, you should pay attention to other parts of your system.
For example, you cannot take advantage of the greater though put
of a SSD that supports transfer rates of 6Gb/s if your system
bus is limited to transfer rates of say 3Gb/s.

[David Bailey]

On 20/01/2013 06:25, E. Mart=EDn-Serrano wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am thinking of installing a 256 GB Solid State Disk (SSD) on my machine to
> increase its performance.
>
> The current configuration of my machine is: 4 cores (8 threads), 3,4 GHz;
> with 12 GB DD3-RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 400 (3 GB integrated RAM) and 4TB
> Internal HD. It is not a small machine, I think.
>
> The Solid State Disk (SSD) would hold the operating system (Windows 8) and
> Mathematica (currently v8); plus some half a dozen of other "mission
> critical" programs.
>
> Anyway, the true actual candidates to reside in the SSD are Windows 8 and
> Mathematica, but I wonder whether it is going to really boost the

> performance of Mathematica considering that the machine already has 12GB of

> RAM.
>
> But I do not know how Mathematica deals with the kernel and the fronted
> (their interaction), in other words, whether the kernel uses de internal HD
> to interact with the kernel and vice versa.
>
> I use intensively and extensively dynamics constructs, and in many occasions
> the dynamic refreshing uses Solve, NSolve and, in occasions NDSolve and
> DSolve, within the second parameter to Dynamic. In any case, with or without
> solving (always small) systems of equations, moving graphical objects tied
> to dynamic locators remains an unsolvable issue to me.
>
> In summary, my question is whether the SSD holding windows and Mathematica
> would bust in any form Mathematica's performance.
>

I think an obvious test, would be to look how much your disk light comes
on with your current system when it is processing your large problems.

You don't say whether you are using the 64-bit version of W8. If you are
not, you should switch to that. Mathematica will then need to be
re-installed (because the installation disk actually contains both the
32-bit and 64-bit code, selected according to the OS), but nothing else
would be required. Indeed your 12 GB will not be contributing much more
than 4 GB would without the 64-bit OS.

David Bailey
http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk

[E. Martín-Serrano]

Sorry, of course the last paragraph should read:

"In summary, my question is whether the SSD holding windows and Mathematica

would boost in any form Mathematica's performance."

-----Mensaje original-----
De: E. Mart=EDn-Serrano [mailto:eMartin...@telefonica.net]
Enviado el: domingo, 20 de enero de 2013 7:21
Para: math...@smc.vnet.net
Asunto: Solid State Disk to boost Mathematica performance

Hi all,

I am thinking of installing a 256 GB Solid State Disk (SSD) on my machine to
increase its performance.

The current configuration of my machine is: 4 cores (8 threads), 3,4 GHz;
with 12 GB DD3-RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 400 (3 GB integrated RAM) and 4 TB
Internal HD. It is not a small machine, I think.

The Solid State Disk (SSD) would hold the operating system (Windows 8) and
Mathematica (currently v8); plus some half a dozen of other "mission
critical" programs.

Anyway, the true actual candidates to reside in the SSD are Windows 8 and
Mathematica, but I wonder whether it is going to really boost the

performance of Mathematica considering that the machine already has 12 GB of

RAM.

But I do not know how Mathematica deals with the kernel and the fronted
(their interaction), in other words, whether the kernel uses de internal HD
to interact with the kernel and vice versa.

I use intensively and extensively dynamics constructs, and in many occasions
the dynamic refreshing uses Solve, NSolve and, in occasions NDSolve and
DSolve, within the second parameter to Dynamic. In any case, with or without
solving (always small) systems of equations, moving graphical objects tied
to dynamic locators remains an unsolvable issue to me.

In summary, my question is whether the SSD holding windows and Mathematica
would bust in any form Mathematica's performance.

[Szabolcs Horvát]

Hi,

The short answer is no, it won't boost Mathematica's performance for
most computation.

The longer answer is that the Mathematica kernel doesn't need to access
the disk a lot (unless you explicitly ask it to write/read things
to/from disk), and its speed it mainly limited by your CPU. Where the
SSD will make a noticeable difference in Mathematica is browsing the
documentation centre. Help pages will load faster in my experience. It
will also significantly speed up the startup of many programs and will
reduce the boot time of your OS, so it may be a worthwhile upgrade

[E. Martín-Serrano]

OS is Windows 8- 64bits.

Other HW info:

Chipset H67

Intel Core i7 2600/ 3,4 GHz (four cores - 8 threads)

Frontal bus DMI transfer rates: 2.5 GT/s

The technical info for transfer rates supplied by specialists (Intel does
not provide much information about its chipset, as far as I know) is a bit
confusing. I am posting this info from third parties in case it is of any
use for others.

These third parties say:
_________________________

"So the i7 is 2.66GHz clock speed, 4.8 GT/s per second, and uses the QPI
interface which transfers up to 25.6 GB/s of data.

While the i5 has the same 2.66 GHz clock speed, it transfers 2.5 GT/s and
the DMI interface can handle less than half the data across the motherboard.

Amazingly, the 2.66GHz 2.5GTs DMI i5 is considered noticeably faster than
the top of the line Core 2 Quad 9650 which has 12MB cache, 3.0GHz clock
speed and a 1333 bus speed (FSB)."
____________________________

Which suggests that my Intel Core i7 2600/ 3,4 GHz (four cores - 8 threads)
would support the 6GB.

Thanks very much to everybody. Your remarks are going to be useful.

Regards

E. Martin-Serrano


-----Mensaje original-----
De: Bill Rowe [mailto:read...@sbcglobal.net]
Enviado el: lunes, 21 de enero de 2013 6:08
Para: math...@smc.vnet.net
Asunto: Re: Solid State Disk to boost Mathematica performance

On 1/20/13 at 1:21 AM, eMartin...@telefonica.net (E.
Mart=C3=ADn-Serrano) wrote:

>I am thinking of installing a 256 GB Solid State Disk (SSD) on my
>machine to increase its performance.

>Anyway, the true actual candidates to reside in the SSD are Windows
>8 and Mathematica, but I wonder whether it is going to really boost the
>performance of Mathematica considering that the machine already has 12
>GB of RAM.

[João Paulo Pereira]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 5:09 AM, Szabolcs Horv=E1t <szho...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The short answer is no, it won't boost Mathematica's performance for
> most computation.
>
> The longer answer is that the Mathematica kernel doesn't need to access
> the disk a lot (unless you explicitly ask it to write/read things
> to/from disk), and its speed it mainly limited by your CPU. Where the
> SSD will make a noticeable difference in Mathematica is browsing the
> documentation centre. Help pages will load faster in my experience. It
> will also significantly speed up the startup of many programs and will
> reduce the boot time of your OS, so it may be a worthwhile upgrade
>

Hi, please let me enter this discussion. I am thinking in buying a new
laptop and I'm planning to use Mathematica a lot. I thought having a SSD
was essential. Apparently it isn't. Some of you have suggested
some features that are important. Besides CPU speed and memory and 64 bit,
what should I be looking for in order to increase performance while running
Mathematica?

My best regards

Joao