[OS X TeX] speed of typesetting on a MacBook?

[Justin C. Walker]

On Jan 11, 2006, at 10:32 , Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 11 janv. 06 à 19:11, William Adams a écrit :
>
>> Apparently the 4-5 figure is based on multi-processing benchmarks
>> which naturally run poorly on a single-processor machine.
>>
>> I suspect it'll be quite a bit better though, simply 'cause Mac OS X
>> is well-suited to multi-processor machines.
>
> Earlier this year <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.macosx/ 
> 11786>, speaking of dual-processor machines, Gerben told us:
>
> "Also, having a dual does not help run TeX itself faster. TeX runs  
> on a single processor (single threaded)."

Gerben is correct; a single-threaded application can only use one  
processor at a time.  Apparent performance may improve if other  
things are going on, because those other things will have an  
additional processor to use, thereby allowing the single-threaded app  
to continue running.

> Does this mean the TeX universal binaries cannot take advantage of  
> the dual core architecture?

You may be confused about the universal binary.  This is a  
"container" file format that holds executables for multiple  
architectures.  For Mac OS X, this means both PPC and intel binaries  
are in the same file.  This is what Mac OS X (and NeXT, back in the  
day) has called "fat" binaries.  This is orthogonal to the  
multiprocessor issue.


> BTW, Gerben and Richard, in case you're listening, are you some of  
> these developers who hired a development MacTel computer and who  
> are now, apparently <http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2006-01-11/ 
> #12173>, offered by Apple to exchange it for a brand new iMac? That  
> would be cool!

This is for real.

We may be in some danger of wandering off into the weeds here.

Cheers,

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon at Large
Institute for General Semantics
-----------
My wife 'n kids 'n dogs are gone,
I can't get Jesus on the phone,
But Ol' Milwaukee's Best is my best friend.
-----------



------------------------- Info --------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/