From: Rick Nooner <rick@...>
Date: 2005-08-17T06:00:33+09:00
Subject: Ruby on Unix vs. Windows

Yesterday at work we took an analysis program written in ruby that we had been
running on a Solaris box (Sunblade 1500, 1 Gig RAM, 1.5 Ghz Sparc) and moved
it to a windows box (HP D530, 1 Gig RAM, 2.8 Ghz Pentium) to do performance
comparisons.

The analysis builds a profile in memory of over 3.6 GB of data on disk.  On
the Solaris box, it takes about 35 mins and uses about 700 MB of RAM.  It
would not complete on the windows box using the full data set, bombing with
"failed to allocate memory (NoMemoryError)".  There was nearly 800 MB of
RAM free on the windows box as well as having a 4 Gig swap available.

Is windows that inefficient with memory allocation or is this a ruby
implementation issue on windows?

Before anyone asks, I would have done the comparison on a linux box if I
had one available since what I really wanted to know was the speed boost
that a Intel processor would give me.  I didn't have one readly available,
though.

Thanks,
Rick

-- 
Rick Nooner
rick@nooner.net
http://www.nooner.net