[GRASSLIST:5904] Re: Using GRASS on a Dual processor G4

[Glynn Clements]

Kurt Springs wrote:

> Just a quick question.  I was contemplating getting a new Power Mac.  Does
> anyone no if GRASS would be able to take advantage of dual processor G4
> machine?

A second processor probably wouldn't be of much use for GRASS on a
single-user system.

More generally, try performing slow operations while running "top"; if
one process gets nearly all of the CPU time, a second CPU wouldn't
help much.

E.g. when running d.rast on large rasters, d.rast gets ~90% of the CPU
time, with XDRIVER and the X server getting most of the rest. In this
case, a second CPU would give ~10% speedup.

OTOH, if you can reasonably perform some tasks as long-running batch
jobs, then you could run such batches in a separate session, and still
have a CPU spare for interactive use.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>