> From what I have read, LabVIEW can take advantage of dual processors,
> particularly if things are wired to allow for parallel execution. However,
> does this benefit justify the substantial increase in price? Especially
> considering the fact that the memory speed and front side bus speed are lower?
>
> I doubt that we would even notice the difference, since our current computers
> are 5 years old, but I thought I would ask anyways.
>
As stated in the other posting, picking computers is hard when you know
the details, and even harder when you don't.
To determine whether the money will be well spent, I'd suggest that you
spend some time using the Performance Monitor to measure what your
current computer is up to. The task manager will give you one metric of
CPU usage, but the Performance Monitor can give you info on the time
spent waiting on disk, paging out virtual memory, the time spent in OS
routines, and the time that the CPU is idle. It is complex, and may
take a bit of time to figure out how to understand what it is measuring,
but this is the only way to make an informed decision.
Some tasks are disk bound, and your money spent on CPU will be wasted,
and instead you should investigate bigger faster disks with bigger
caches. Some tasks are memory bound, and you can up the memory in you
machine and ignore the CPU speed. Some tasks are CPU bound, and in this
case, both upping the CPU speed and the number of CPUs can affect the
performance, but making your programs utilize the extra processor can be
challenging, even in LV.
If you use the Performance Monitor and believe that you are CPU bound,
you might look at your app using the profiler in LV. It will give you
an idea of the tasks consuming most of the CPU time. If you believe
that other things can progress at the same time and they won't be
blocked by I/O or nonreentrant subVI calls, then the dual machine may be
worth it. I have a dual processor Mac, and I really enjoy it. I find
that I'm far less frustrated when the computer is doing one thing and
I'm doing another -- in otherwords, it multitasks better and I don't get
ignored. I also have some benchmark VIs that do in fact run much
quicker when running on my dual machine, but you will see other tasks
that cannot take advantage. As I said, if you learn how to use the
Performance Monitor, you stand a better chance of spending your money
wisely.
Greg McKaskle
