[OS X TeX] What kind of operation is TeXing? (concerning hardware)

[Gerben Wierda]

On 2 Mar 2005, at 22:29, Herb Schulz wrote:

> On 2/5/05 8:34 AM, "Herb Schulz" <herbs at wideopenwest.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Howdy,
>>
>> You've got to compile from the Command Line and redirect the output 
>> from
>> pdflatex to /dev/null, the bit bucket.
>>
>> time pdflatex source2e >/dev/nul
>>
>> is the full command line command. The screen output takes quite a bit 
>> of
>> time. On my 550MHz Powerbook it took 38s... Sigh...
>>
>> Good Luck,
>>
>> Herb Schulz
>> (herbs at wideopenwest.com)
>>
>
> Howdy,
>
> Let's see now... I've added 512MB of RAM to my PowerBook 550MHZ G4; up 
> to
> 1GB now. I've also put in a new drive, the Fujitsu 80GB 5400RPM drive
> recommended on this list, from a stock 30GB 4200RPM drive. In general
> programs load faster and I get very little swapping now; the system 
> feels
> snappier when loading off the HD and if I have lots of programs open at
> once. Best of all is the silence of the HD and all the extra space for 
> more
> photos.
>
> I just re-ran the ``time pdflatex source2e >/dev/null'' (3rd run) and 
> got
> the same results. It appears that the bottleneck is not RAM or HD
> performance but shear processor power that is needed for this job to 
> get
> done quickly.

I have come to the same conclusion after upgrading my 80GB 5400rpm 2MB 
Maxtor to a 120GN 7200rpm 8MB Seagate.

But this does make my Cube 100% silent, so I'm better off.

Anyway, this is on my list. Why is TeX so hideously slow on Mac OS X 
(PPC)?

G

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