What Hardware To Maximize Execution of System 9 Native Code?

[podolsky]

I have been running my scientific imaging app inside SS for almost a week now and I am very happy! Yet, the code I am running is very computationally intensive. It is an image mining app that does some very ambitious pattern recognition and it can really run slow on my 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Pro Mac with 7 GB of ram. If I wanted to max out the speed of execution of these codes what hardware would I want to use? Go back to running Sys. 9 native on the last fastest machine possible OR running inside SS on the fastest hardware out there today???

Thanks to everyone who helped me last week.

Richard

[24bit]

If you dont count Apple´s Classic emulation, the last Mac to boot into OS9 would have been a G4 with a Geekbench round about 1000.
Looking round at recent MacPro 5,1 boxes, Geekbench results up to 40000 are not uncommon.
As a rule of the thumb SheepShaver will perform with a speed about 1/8th of the host. On *nix hosts perpormance may be somewhat better than one eigth, though.
Any recent i5 or i7 quad core host host with SheepShaver may outperform a OS9 G4, if your are solely looking for raw computing power.

[podolsky]

That was my gut thinking on the matter - that new hardware ought to outperform the old. Makes sense given that SS only uses a single core - so getting it computing on the fastest available core is about the best one can hope for.

Clearly, I need to recompile my code to execute under OSX and multithread but that means re-writing the entire UI which is huge. So, that ain't gonna happen. Perhaps there is some existing graphic shell that I could get my routines to execute within........anyway, I ramble. Thanks for the info.

[24bit]

SheepShaver on my OSX hosts makes use of all cores it can get - alas I have only four.
Someone with 6 to 12 cores might confirm maybe.

On GNU-Linux or Windy hosts, I did only see one core used indeed.
Load seems to be swapped between the cores with GNU-Linux, but the overall performance looks like one core.

If your app is compatible with OS 7.6, you might try it with SS and the oldworld 4MB ROM.
I found 7.6 to be the fastest OS for SheepShaver. Performance gain wont be more than a one digit percentage anyway.

[podolsky]

Activity monitor shows that SS takes up between 106-119 percent of my 4 cores which is just a tad over one core. That is when I totally peg the app running within SS. Thanks for the info, 1 or two percent gains would not buy me all that much. I will run SS and my app on a really fast machine when next I can and report back.

Thanks!

rp

[yksoft1]

A fastest OS9/Classic capable system is a Power Mac G5 Quad 2.5GHz...

[MetalSnake]

Activity monitor shows that SS takes up between 106-119 percent of my 4 cores which is just a tad over one core.

I think that would be one core which is overclocked (modern systems can overclock one core if it sees that there is power needed on only one core)