Hi Folks, Sorry to raise what has probably been discussed before, but I an repeatedly struck by the comparative slowness of S-plus for Windows compared with R for Linux when doing much the same thing. I don't have a direct comparison, because they're not running on the same machine; but machine W has a faster CPU and more RAM than machine L, yet S-plus on W seems to take longer by quite a big factor (of the order of 5x) than R on L. My instincts say that "WIndows" is probably a significant factor in the comnparison, but still ... Ideally, to compare R with S-plus, one should look at them both on the same OS (Unix or Windows) on the same machine. Can anyone give me clean comparative speeds? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 20-Jun-03 Time: 14:22:02 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
Spedd: R vs S-plus
6 messages · Uwe Ligges, Philippe GROSJEAN, A.J. Rossini +2 more
(Ted Harding) wrote:
Hi Folks, Sorry to raise what has probably been discussed before, but I an repeatedly struck by the comparative slowness of S-plus for Windows compared with R for Linux when doing much the same thing. I don't have a direct comparison, because they're not running on the same machine; but machine W has a faster CPU and more RAM than machine L, yet S-plus on W seems to take longer by quite a big factor (of the order of 5x) than R on L. My instincts say that "WIndows" is probably a significant factor in the comnparison, but still ... Ideally, to compare R with S-plus, one should look at them both on the same OS (Unix or Windows) on the same machine. Can anyone give me clean comparative speeds?
It heavily depends on what you are doing, and on the versions of R and S-PLUS. Given you do not link R against very specialized libraries such as ATLAS on one and not the other OS, I found no dramatic differences between R on Linux and Windows, but that might depend on the application as well. Uwe Ligges
You will find a speed comparison of S-PLUS and R, but also Matlab, Octave, Scilab, Ox and O-Matrix under Windows at http://www.sciviews.org/other/benchmark.htm. It seems that, at least under Windows your impressions are confirmed. Also, I measured that R is a little bit faster under Linux Mandrake 9 on the same computer. So, comparing S-PLUS under Windows with R under Linux could be even better in favor of R. However, I do not draw conclusions about Linux version of S-PLUS because I never tried it. Best, Philippe ...........]<(({?<...............<?}))><............................... ) ) ) ) ) ( ( ( ( ( Dr. Philippe Grosjean ) ) ) ) ) ( ( ( ( ( LOV, UMR 7093 ) ) ) ) ) Station Zoologique ( ( ( ( ( Observatoire Oc?anologique ) ) ) ) ) BP 28 ( ( ( ( ( 06234 Villefranche sur mer cedex ) ) ) ) ) France ( ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) ) tel: +33.4.93.76.38.18, fax: +33.4.93.76.38.34 ( ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) ) e-mail: phgrosjean at sciviews.org ( ( ( ( ( SciViews project coordinator (http://www.sciviews.org) ) ) ) ) ) ....................................................................... -----Original Message----- From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch]On Behalf Of Ted Harding Sent: vendredi 20 juin 2003 3:22 To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch Subject: [R] Spedd: R vs S-plus Hi Folks, Sorry to raise what has probably been discussed before, but I an repeatedly struck by the comparative slowness of S-plus for Windows compared with R for Linux when doing much the same thing. I don't have a direct comparison, because they're not running on the same machine; but machine W has a faster CPU and more RAM than machine L, yet S-plus on W seems to take longer by quite a big factor (of the order of 5x) than R on L. My instincts say that "WIndows" is probably a significant factor in the comnparison, but still ... Ideally, to compare R with S-plus, one should look at them both on the same OS (Unix or Windows) on the same machine. Can anyone give me clean comparative speeds? With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 20-Jun-03 Time: 14:22:02 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> writes:
My instincts say that "WIndows" is probably a significant factor in the comnparison, but still ... Ideally, to compare R with S-plus, one should look at them both on the same OS (Unix or Windows) on the same machine. Can anyone give me clean comparative speeds?
It's not that simple! Anecdotal evidence has constructed a few scenarios where R will run, but S-PLUS won't, and a few where R will barely run, but S-plus has very few problems (problem == slowness, in this case). It would be critical to be a subjective Bayesian about it, since weighting of common applications, and perhaps more importantly, quality of code for matching up with the difference, will have a large impact. best, -tony
A.J. Rossini / rossini at u.washington.edu / rossini at scharp.org http://software.biostat.washington.edu/ UNTIL IT MOVES IN JULY. Biomedical and Health Informatics, University of Washington Biostatistics, HVTN/SCHARP, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. FHCRC: 206-667-7025 (fax=4812)|Voicemail is pretty sketchy/use Email CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail message and any attachments ... {{dropped}}
On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Uwe Ligges wrote:
(Ted Harding) wrote:
Hi Folks, Sorry to raise what has probably been discussed before, but I an repeatedly struck by the comparative slowness of S-plus for Windows compared with R for Linux when doing much the same thing. I don't have a direct comparison, because they're not running on the same machine; but machine W has a faster CPU and more RAM than machine L, yet S-plus on W seems to take longer by quite a big factor (of the order of 5x) than R on L. My instincts say that "WIndows" is probably a significant factor in the comnparison, but still ...
Prejudices?
Ideally, to compare R with S-plus, one should look at them both on the same OS (Unix or Windows) on the same machine. Can anyone give me clean comparative speeds?
It heavily depends on what you are doing, and on the versions of R and S-PLUS.
Yes, especially versions of S-PLUS. There are big differences between recent versions of S-PLUS, and a comparison of 2000 vs 6.1 depends heavily on the task. It also depends on the version of Windows, and (especially in S-PLUS) the file system type (NTFS/VFAT and even the versions of each) and if it is local or remotely mounted.
Given you do not link R against very specialized libraries such as ATLAS on one and not the other OS, I found no dramatic differences between R on Linux and Windows, but that might depend on the application as well.
I often compare on the same hardware, using Windows XP. I'd say that on average the Windows port is 10-20% slower (and we have some idea why), and almost never 50% slower. I don't think it is normal to see factors as large as 5 either way on real tasks, provided there is a reasonable amount of RAM available. (Both R and S-PLUS under Windows run very slowly if there is a very small amount of RAM.) I used to keep extensive tables of the time taken for different versions on the same hardware for all the MASS scripts, but these days they run fast enough on all the systems I use. Here's some numbers, RH8.0 on a dual Athlon 2600, R using ATLAS (single-processor) R 1.7.1 S+6.1 ch04 8.40 10.52 ch05 5.94 11.18 ch06 72.80 23.89 ch07 11.36 29.45 ch10 20.07 39.61 ch13 9.00 13.7 That's probably a fair comparison, as I have tried to make those tasks work well on both systems *and* they are real tasks, not small artificial `benchmarks'.
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
On 20-Jun-03 Ted Harding wrote:
Sorry to raise what has probably been discussed before, but I an repeatedly struck by the comparative slowness of S-plus for Windows compared with R for Linux when doing much the same thing.
Thanks to all who so promptly responded with comments and information, and especially to Philippe Grosjean for giving the URL for that most interesting set of benchmark comparisons. I well take the point that comparative speeds will depend on what you are doing -- indeed that is apparent from the benchmarks -- but there is still evidence that overall one can expect distinctly greater speed from R. Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 20-Jun-03 Time: 16:50:18 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------