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.
Technorati Tags: Mac OS X, Performance, Serendipity Blackmagic, server
Recent Comments