Re: [Groff] groff performance in respect to hardware platform

[Steve Izma]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 08:25:50PM -0400, Larry Kollar wrote:
> Subject: Re: [Groff] groff performance in respect to hardware platform
> 
> > I'm wondering how CPU configurations affect groff processing
> > speed.
> 
> ... So any non-netbook, five years old or less, will perform
> pretty well with groff.

I guess I need to re-state the question. I'm quite familiar with
groff's speed, including with 1000-page (or larger) complex
books. But I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if groff benefits
from running on multiple CPU cores and multiple CPUs.

I assume that another way of asking this: "is groff
multithreaded?" I don't know enough about this kind of
programming to answer this by looking at the source code.

I'm only considering this in a Linux environment (Debian stable,
fairly recent kernel).

I suppose another factor is that since the Linux kernel is built for
parallelization, even if groff can only run on a single core,
all the operating system services can run on other cores without
interfering with groff's process. Or do I not know what I'm
talking about here?

When I typeset large books, there are some stages, like adjusting
track kerning on a page, where I want to see immediate results
on my viewer. My current hardware uses a five-year-old four-core
CPU. A section of text maybe 50 pages long will update in my
viewer in less than two seconds. But trying to do this for a
250-page book is tedious. That's why I'm interested in processing
speed.

        Thanks,
        -- Steve

-- 
Steve Izma
-
Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener N2H 1W6    p:519-745-1313
E-mail: address@hidden

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