Re: st: on 32/64-bit OS, CPU and Stata

[James Muller <james.muller@internode.on.net>]

I guess this all gets very task-specific from here, depending on just 
how StataCorp have coded and built the different Statas. Also back to 
the OS kernel and its memory handling.

No idea what computation was involved in Joe West's do file, but perhaps 
Stata uses an optimized linear algebra library and Joe's do file 
involves lots of unoptimized calculations that aren't relying on linear 
algebra (19 mins doesn't sound like OLS).

...an unknowable mystery of the black box that is Stata, alas.

Cheers Alan

James


Alan Riley wrote:


> I have one more comment to make on the speed of a 32-bit version of
> Stata running on a 64-bit box vs. a 64-bit version of Stata running
> on that same box.
>
> I just did a quick 'silly' speed comparison.  I generated two
> variables containing 500,000 uniformly-distributed random numbers
> each.  I then sorted each variable.  Finally I performed a linear
> regression of one variable against the other.  I ran each
> commands multiple times and took an average timing.
>
> This was done on a box running 64-bit Windows with a 1.4 GHz
> AMD Opteron 240 processor and 1 GB of RAM.
>
> The timings for 32-bit Stata on this box were
>
>    sort:  2.00 seconds
> regress:   .88 seconds
>
> The timings for 64-bit Stata were
>
>    sort:  1.65 seconds
> regress:   .80 seconds
>
>
> These timings are just a quick example which backs up what we have
> already observed in our testing of Stata on various platforms.  The
> 64-bit version of Stata outperforms the 32-bit version of Stata on a
> 64-bit box.  Users wishing to push the edge of both speed and memory
> are served very well with the current crop of 64-bit machines
> available to them running a 64-bit version of Stata.
>
>
> --Alan
> (ariley@stata.com)
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