Re: st: Stata and CPu usage

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

This was bereft of an opening when it came back to me as a list member.

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tunga: For multiprocessor use, you need Stata/MP. There are no tricks,
> no work-arounds, no ways of forcing SE to behave like MP.
>
> Given that, the answer to 2 is just a matter of curiosity, but
> http://www.stata.com/statamp/ includes a link to a white paper which
> may give detals on -lpoly-.
>
> -lpoly- is by its nature going to be much slower than alternatives
> based on fractional polynomials or cubic splines, which in my
> experience usually work better anyway.
>
> Nick [a different one]
>
> On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Tunga Kantarcı
> <tungakantarci@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello Nick and Mukund,
>>
>> I also believe that my Stata/SE is using one of the two processors. So
>> the questions are
>>
>> 1. How do I make Stata/SE use both of the two processors?
>> 2. How can I check that lpoly is parallelizable?
>>
>> Tunga
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From    Mukund Chari <mukundc@uw.edu>
>>> To      "statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu" <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
>>> Subject         RE: st: Stata and CPu usage
>>> Date    Mon, 28 May 2012 23:05:19 +0000
>>> Hello Tunga,
>>>
>>> Nick is probably right.
>>>
>>> You might also want to consider whether the routine you are executing (lpoly in your case) is:
>>>
>>> a) Parallelizable: certain algorithms need to run serially, and cannot be parallelized. You might want to check if this is true in the case of lpoly.
>>> b) If this routine is parallelizable, whether Stata implements a parallelized version of the routine in the Multi-Processor version. If not, getting this to run on a MP version might not help.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Mukund.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Nick Sanders
>>> Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 1:45 PM
>>> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
>>> Subject: Re: st: Stata and CPu usage
>>>
>>> Hello Tunga,
>>>
>>> I'm not a Windows user myself (so I can't verify this is how Windows Task Manager expresses CPU usage), but this is my guess:
>>>
>>> 1) The total processor power available to you, given a Core 2 Duo, is X
>>> 2) The power of one of those two processors is then X/2
>>> 3) Stata/SE can only use one processor at a time (given it isn't Stata/MP)
>>> 4) 50% is actually Stata/SE using the full power of one of your two processors
>>>
>>> Might that be the case?
>>>
>>> -Nick
>>>
>>> On May 28, 2012, at 11:35 AM, Tunga Kantarci wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I have an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7700 2.4 Ghz system with 32 gm ram and
>>>> 32 bit operating system. I use Windows 7. I use Stata/SE.
>>>>
>>>> I am using the lpoly command and the calculations take too long. I
>>>> happened to look at the CPU usage at Windows task manager and realized
>>>> that the CPU usage of Stata/SE does not exceed 50%.
>>>>
>>>> I wonder why this is the case and if there is a way to increase the CPU usage?

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