Re: Using ConTeXt-LMTX for modern Mathematically-Literate-Programming 1/2

[Stephen Gaito <stephen@perceptisys.co.uk>]

Hans,

As I said my desktop is elderly... it has a 2.8GHz processor, 16Gb of
DDR3 memory, and a couple of old SATA1 hard disks, and only 3Mb of CPU
cache...

... all well past its use by date for single threaded ConTeXt. ;-(

So one way to get better performance for ConTeXt is to invest in a new
ultra fast processor. Which will cost a lot, and use a lot of power
which has to be cooled, which uses even more power....

Alternatively, for the same costs (or less), I can buy cheaper slower
processors but have lots of threads (a cluster of Raspberry Pi 4 8Gb
cards)...

Alas this requires finding some way to parallelize ConTeXt....

(Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread ;-(

Regards,

Stephen Gaito 

On Wed, 2 Dec 2020 14:04:18 +0100
Hans Hagen <j.hagen@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On 12/2/2020 10:40 AM, Stephen Gaito wrote:
> 
> > Many thanks for your swift and helpful comments.
> > 
> > After some *very crude* tests using the `luametatex` and
> > `luametafun` documents, I find that while I *can* stop effective
> > processing at various points in the LuaMetaTeX pipeline, the time
> > difference overall is not really significant enough to bother with
> > this approach.
> > 
> > The principle problem is, as you suggested below, "stopping" the
> > pipeline at the PDF stage (using for example the
> > `pre_output_filter`) corrupted the `*.tuc` data which is for my
> > purposes, critical.
> > 
> > Your comment was:
> >   
> >> but keep in mind that multipass data is flushed as part of the
> >> shipout (because it is often location and order bound)  
> > 
> > For the record, using the `append_to_vlist_filter` callback, I did
> > manage to drastically reduce the "pages" (which were all blank, not
> > surprisingly).
> > 
> > However, on my elderly desktop from 2008, both callbacks
> > essentially cut only 6-8 seconds out of 18 seconds, for the
> > `luametatex` document, and 190 seconds, for the `luametafun`
> > document.  
> 
> hm, on my 2013 laptop the luametatex manual needs 10 sec (i have all
> the fonts, so that includes a bunch) and a metafun manual should do
> about 20
> 
> a test on am M1 mini needs half those times as reported yesterday
> 
> i bet that on a modern desktop the luatex manual will do < 5 sec
> 
> > In the case of the `luametafun` document, it is the MetaFun/MetaPost
> > processing which, of course, is taking a long time (as it should,
> > the graphics computations represent important but complex
> > computations).  
> 
> One run or many due to xref? Maybe your machine has no significant
> cpu cache? Do you run from disk or ssd? How much memory?
> 
> > My ultimate goal is to parallelize the production of large, heavily
> > cross-referenced, ConTeXt documents... more on this in a future
> > email...  
> Hans
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>                                            Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
>                Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
>         tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl
> -----------------------------------------------------------------

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