[R-SIG-Mac]some tests with new Mac

[Jan de Leeuw]

I was trying out my new 2 x 1Ghz G4, and discovered a  number of
things. The benchmark was

 > hilbert<-function(n) 1/(outer(seq(n),seq(n),"+")-1)
 > system.time(eigen(hilbert(xxx)))

where xxx is 500 or 1000. I compare 4 implementations of R on
the same machine (running Mac OS X 10.1.3 and OS 9.2.2).

In the first place the Carbon version uses about 19 secs for
500 and 160 secs for 1000. This is about 10% faster than on
my previous Mac (Dual 800 MHz). But the Darwin versions
(both development 1.5.0 and official 1.4.1) use 4.7 seconds
for 500 and 50 seconds for 1000 - i.e. the Darwin version is
three times as fast as the Carbon version (with this benchmark
and with this machine). The 1.5.0 uses ATLAS, the 1.4.1 does
not, and that does not seem to make a difference.

But (weirdness) R-1.4.1 patched (compiled in exactly the
same way as R-devel on the same machine) uses 13.5
seconds for 500 and 115 seconds for 1000, i.e. only 30%
faster than Carbon, and more than twice as slow as the
official 1.4.1 and as R-devel.

===
Jan de Leeuw; Professor and Chair, UCLA Department of Statistics;
US mail: 9432 Boelter Hall, Box 951554, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554
phone (310)-825-9550;  fax (310)-206-5658;  email: deleeuw@stat.ucla.edu
homepage: http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~deleeuw
========================================================
           No matter where you go, there you are. --- Buckaroo Banzai
                    http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~deleeuw/sounds/nomatter.au
========================================================