Whether you are using hdd or ssd for storage only matters for the first startup. I have Sage installed on a hdd on my desktop and starting from a cold cache takes about 11s, and any subsequent start about 700ms. The 100.000 stupid filesystem calls really only mean that the directory structure needs to be read once into cache, and from then on we are just using the fs cache as a in-memory database.
The only caveat to this is that you might have your filesystem mounted with atime (save read-access time to files). Nobody in his right mind does that anymore under Linux, pretty much everybody has now switched to relatime (save read-access time only if it is older than file creation time) or noatime. Mostly because git can become horribly slow with atime. Though I think OSX has not caught up to that yet, though I don't have a Mac to test it. You can try mount -vuw -o noatime / and see if it makes a difference for you. [vbraun@volker-desktop ~]$ time sage < /dev/null ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | Sage Version 5.1.beta5, Release Date: 2012-06-19 | | Type "notebook()" for the browser-based notebook interface. | | Type "help()" for help. | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ********************************************************************** * * * Warning: this is a prerelease version, and it may be unstable. * * * ********************************************************************** sage: Exiting Sage (CPU time 0m0.01s, Wall time 0m0.01s). real 0m0.659s user 0m0.541s sys 0m0.124s On Monday, June 25, 2012 6:00:47 AM UTC+1, William wrote: > > I think OS X is by default slower than Linux at the (like 100,000 > stupid) filesystem calls that Sage does every time it starts up. > With my OS X 10.7.4 laptop, which has a very fast SSD, I get the > following repeatedly: > blastoff:~ wstein$ time sage < /dev/null > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > | Sage Version 5.0, Release Date: 2012-05-14 | > | Type notebook() for the GUI, and license() for information. | > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > sage: > Exiting Sage (CPU time 0m0.01s, Wall time 0m0.01s). > real 0m1.526s > user 0m1.064s > sys 0m0.504s > > On exactly the same laptop using a Linux Virtualbox virtual machine I > get this repeatedly: > > sagews@sagewsworker:~$ time sage </dev/null > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > | Sage Version 5.0.1, Release Date: 2012-06-10 | > | Type notebook() for the GUI, and license() for information. | > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > sage: > Exiting Sage (CPU time 0m0.02s, Wall time 0m0.02s). > > real 0m0.992s > user 0m0.784s > sys 0m0.212s > > > > I don't know if there are filesystem or OS parameters in OS X that one > could change that would speed things up. > > William > -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
