With version 3 of Serendipity Blackmagic we calculate the speed of the Blackmagic server as it starts up. This speed rating is used for efficient job management in a cluster and to gauge a performance of a particular machine. But what does that really mean? A recent question on the forum was asking just this so I ran some tests to determine what an increase in server speed rating actually meant in processing of jobs.

The Tests

I compared an old Mac G4 – Dual 2.25 Ghz with 1GB RAM with a new MacPro Dual 2.6 Intel duo core processors (effectively a quad) with 2GB RAM. See a previous post for more info on the machine spec and a speed comparison of one imager/renderer verses two of each.

The version of Serendipity Blackmagic was the same on both machines – 3.4beta1
Both machines had the same RIP and Pagesetup configuration.

The Speed rating for the machines are as follows

Mac G4 – 119
MacPro – 960

The servers were configured to use 2 imagers and 2 renderers.

The jobs are two Celebrant 8up impositions (screened input).

The Cover is 434MB and Page 4 is 375MB as shown in the RIPMonitor. These were submitted manually to a Pagesetup configured as follows.

Output device – Epson 7800
Resolution – 720 x 720 dpi.
Input Screening – RDT
Output Screening – Stochastic 3
Resampling – Bi-Linear
ICC – on
Rendering intent – relative colorimetric

No printing was done. This was purely a look at imaging and rendering speeds.

The Results

The results are shown below. Please note that only these two jobs were processed at that time. In a busy production environment there will be polling and printing and maybe other Serendipity Clients running etc. Here I sent the job and let it complete before sending something else. But it should be some sort of indication on the performance increase.

summary="A table showing speed of jobs passing through two different servers">

Speed tests – Comparison of server speed

Job	Polling Method	Mac G4 – 119		Intel Duo – 960		Total Time
		Image	Render	Image	Render	G4	Intel
Cover	localhost	9min 50sec	9min 15sec	1min 33sec	2min 6sec	19min 5sec	3min 29sec
Cover	agent	8min 19sec	9min 14sec	1min 9sec	2min 5sec	17min 33sec	3min 14sec
Page 4	agent	7min 35sec	8min 40sec	1min 12sec	2min 10sec	16min 15sec	3min 22sec
*Cover + Page 4	agent	16min 26sec	14min 29sec	1min 50sec	2min 37sec	31min 10sec	4min 45sec
		15min 8sec	15min 8sec	1min 53sec	2min 34sec

*The last test Cover + Page 4 was submitting both jobs together. With the server set to use 2 imagers and 2 renderers they are processed in parallel so there is a time detriment compared with the single job but total time for both to complete is less.

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