Kamil Toth wrote:
Folks:
I need an advise from somebody well versed in computers. I have bought a
new laptop, Dell Inspiron 9400. This is a pretty powerful dual core
machine. I found it much faster than my previous Toshiba-Centrino, and
of course I feel good about that. But what I have noticed is that each
of the processors works only 50% of its time, that means that I have no
advantage of its "dual-coreness" when I work in s-plus. Is that possible
to somehow take more from a dual core machine? Maybe there is some kind
of settings in S-PLUS or in OS?
thank you
I'm pretty sure that S-Plus will only make use of one core at a time. A
program has to be specifically written such that it will take advantage
of multiple cores and for most software this is currently not the case.
For some software applications, such as Matlab, you could run two
instances of the program (one on each core) share work between these
using custom-written code. However, unless you're running some serious
number-crunching this won't be worth your while. I think S-Plus will
only run on one core at a time. They might be doing something cheeky
like asking for a separate licence for each core, though. Nothing would
surprise me.
The main advantage of your dual core is that you can have one core fully
loaded crunching in SPlus, whilst the other is largely idle--allowing
you to work on other applications normally. For this to work well (at
all?) your OS needs to support this.
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/2005/dual_core.asp
--
Rob Campbell - Research Scientist
Autistic Bacteriophage Research Group:
"We provide hope for disadvantaged `phages"
www.autisticBacteriophage.notlong.com
Oxford
~ www.robertcampbell.co.uk ~
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