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Graphics driver speeds

Subject: Graphics driver speeds
From: Don MacQueen <macq@llnl.gov>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:06:35 -0800
Cc: s-news@wubios.wustl.edu
This is a problem for which I am afraid there is no (current) solution--but if there is one, I would very much appreciate hearing about it.

The new java-based graphics drivers are very slow compared to the older non-jave drivers. Here is some output to show this. For example, in this run, creating a PNG file took 254 times as long (elapsed time) as a PDF file. Most of the time appears to be used during the execution of dev.off().

Source code that created the matrix of times is given below.


            usr  sys elapsed child.usr child.sys
 pdf.time  0.10 0.00    0.18      0.00      0.00
 eps.time  0.28 0.07    1.17      0.12      0.29
  ps.time  0.30 0.05    1.30      0.16      0.32
jpeg.time 14.02 0.04   18.20      0.00      0.00
 png.time 35.93 0.06   45.80      0.00      0.00

Note:
 version
Version 6.0 Release 1 for Sun SPARC, SunOS 5.6 : 2000


----- Source code ------
ps.time <- unix.time({
  postscript("foo.ps", onefile = T, print.it = F)
  plot(1:3)
  dev.off()
})

eps.time <- unix.time({
  postscript("foo.eps", onefile = F, print.it = F)
  plot(1:3)
  dev.off()
})

pdf.time <- unix.time({
  pdf.graph("foo.pdf", width = 6, height = 4)
  plot(1:3)
  dev.off()
})

jpeg.time <- unix.time({
  java.graph("foo.jpeg", format = "")
  plot(1:3)
  dev.off()
})

png.time <- unix.time({
  java.graph("foo.png", format = "PNG")
  plot(1:3)
  dev.off()
})


names(pdf.time) <- c("usr", "sys", "elapsed", "child.usr", "child.sys")
drvr.times <- rbind(pdf.time, eps.time, ps.time, jpeg.time, png.time)

print(drvr.times)
--
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
--------------------------------------

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