Thread Subject: 2007b and Leopard (Intel)

I have just installed Matlab 2007b on my new Mac (2 x Quad
core Xeon's with 16GB RAM etc.), which is running OSX 10.5
(Leopard).

I have never seen Matlab run so slowly! What is going on here?

For example, the bench results place this machine at the
bottom of the list? Furthermore, the GUI frontend is
extraordinarily slow (up to 2sec delay after hitting the
enter key).

Maybe Matlab is not yet supporting this combination?

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Thanks

Adrian Wills wrote:
> I have just installed Matlab 2007b on my new Mac (2 x Quad
> core Xeon's with 16GB RAM etc.), which is running OSX 10.5
> (Leopard).
>
> I have never seen Matlab run so slowly! What is going on here?
>
> For example, the bench results place this machine at the
> bottom of the list? Furthermore, the GUI frontend is
> extraordinarily slow (up to 2sec delay after hitting the
> enter key).
>
> Maybe Matlab is not yet supporting this combination?
>
> Has anyone had a similar experience?
>
> Thanks

I ran the matlab "bench" command on my toshiba satellite MSAT010AIV09
with a T1350@1.86 GHz, 1 GB RAM, and found that this machine is faster
than the Macintosh dual 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon 4 GB reference machine in
the benchmark. The relative speed of my laptop is 38 and that of the
Mac is 30.

So, yeah, Matlab on the Mac appears to suck. If you want, I'd be happy
to trade my $800 laptop for your $4000 Mac! I'll even pay the shipping!

Hi,

There is a change in Leopard's Java which is causing general GUI
slowness in MATLAB on Leopard, which has a workaround. This has been
discussed in another thread on this newsgroup, and there is also an
External Bug Report describing this symptom with the workaround on
www.mathworks.com/support:

< http://www.mathworks.com/support/bugreports/details.html?rp=412219 >

In case you are unable to find the workaround using a search, I'll
mention it here. The solution is to create an unformatted ASCII text
java.opts file in your matlab/bin/maci directory, with the contents:

-Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true

This setting will return Java's UI engine to the version used on Tiger,
which should return MATLAB's GUI responsiveness back to snappy.

If you have difficulty getting this workaround to work, I encourage you
to find the other thread discussing this, or go to the support web pages
and External Bug Report, or contact customer support.

- Brian

Adrian Wills wrote:
> I have just installed Matlab 2007b on my new Mac (2 x Quad
> core Xeon's with 16GB RAM etc.), which is running OSX 10.5
> (Leopard).
>
> I have never seen Matlab run so slowly! What is going on here?
>
> For example, the bench results place this machine at the
> bottom of the list? Furthermore, the GUI frontend is
> extraordinarily slow (up to 2sec delay after hitting the
> enter key).
>
> Maybe Matlab is not yet supporting this combination?
>
> Has anyone had a similar experience?
>
> Thanks

Hi:

I have just got today a latest 2.8 mac pro 8 core with leopard 10.5.1 running
matlab 2008a prerelease. I am utterly disappointed by the lack of speed. The
benchmarks are below those of a 2.0 pentium 4, and the code I am using for
my statistical estimations (basically quadratic optimization) runs 50% slower
than on my year old mac book pro with tiger... what is going on? I use matlab
very intensely, and I feel I just wasted 3000 euros....

I assume the workaround below fixes GUI problems, but I do not seem to
have GUI problems, so I did not try it...

Thanks for any comments, Valentino.




Brian Arnold <barnold@mathworks.com> wrote in message
<4762FE6D.1060803@mathworks.com>...
> Hi,
>
> There is a change in Leopard's Java which is causing general GUI
> slowness in MATLAB on Leopard, which has a workaround. This has been
> discussed in another thread on this newsgroup, and there is also an
> External Bug Report describing this symptom with the workaround on
> www.mathworks.com/support:
>
> < http://www.mathworks.com/support/bugreports/details.html?
rp=412219 >
>
> In case you are unable to find the workaround using a search, I'll
> mention it here. The solution is to create an unformatted ASCII text
> java.opts file in your matlab/bin/maci directory, with the contents:
>
> -Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true
>
> This setting will return Java's UI engine to the version used on Tiger,
> which should return MATLAB's GUI responsiveness back to snappy.
>
> If you have difficulty getting this workaround to work, I encourage you
> to find the other thread discussing this, or go to the support web pages
> and External Bug Report, or contact customer support.
>
> - Brian
>
> Adrian Wills wrote:
> > I have just installed Matlab 2007b on my new Mac (2 x Quad
> > core Xeon's with 16GB RAM etc.), which is running OSX 10.5
> > (Leopard).
> >
> > I have never seen Matlab run so slowly! What is going on here?
> >
> > For example, the bench results place this machine at the
> > bottom of the list? Furthermore, the GUI frontend is
> > extraordinarily slow (up to 2sec delay after hitting the
> > enter key).
> >
> > Maybe Matlab is not yet supporting this combination?
> >
> > Has anyone had a similar experience?
> >
> > Thanks

TOMLAB has tons of options for quadratic optimization - maybe that
will solve all your speed issues. It is not entirely uncommon to see
speed-ups in the 3 significant digit range for large-scale sparse QPs.
Free demo and so is provided of course. Would be happy if you can
could send me a few of the problems. Just add:

save to_send

before the optimization call, zip and send. Then I can send you a
report instead and let you know.

Best wishes, Marcus
Tomlab Optimization Inc.
http://tomopt.com/tomlab/

I have the same problem with an Intel-based iMac 2.8GHz:
Matlab R2007a is extremely slow (both bench.m and my
programs). I believe, if it has nothing to do with Rosetta,
Lapack is not optimised. This is extremely worrying
especially if no improvement has taken place in R2008.

Yannis

I've read various posts regarding the slowness of Matlab
2007-2008a on Leopard with an Intel-based Mac. I would like
to comment that in my case it's not just limited to the GUI
or any underlying components like LAPACK, MEX or Simulink
etc. It's a much more widespread problem. Everything,
categorically seems much slower compared to Tiger. In
particular I'm surprised how much slower my mexed
subroutines have become.

Can someone confirm that this is a general problem related
to X11 under Leopard?

Thanks.

"James Tyrrell" <alex@steele.mgh.harvard.edu> wrote in message
<fue2qc$2ds$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> I've read various posts regarding the slowness of Matlab
> 2007-2008a on Leopard with an Intel-based Mac. I would like
> to comment that in my case it's not just limited to the GUI
> or any underlying components like LAPACK, MEX or Simulink
> etc. It's a much more widespread problem. Everything,
> categorically seems much slower compared to Tiger. In
> particular I'm surprised how much slower my mexed
> subroutines have become.
>
> Can someone confirm that this is a general problem related
> to X11 under Leopard?
>
> Thanks.
>

I ran quantitative comparison benchmarks on a new 2.8ghz quad core Mac
Pro, under both Leopard and 64-bit Vista (running natively using bootcamp
on a separate individual drive). This allows comparisons on the same
processor.

Across the board, the Mac implementation is slower by a factor of 2-3. It is
not limited to scrolling, but includes basic arithmetic operations like FFT.
Everything is slower by a significant amount. I've no idea what could be
causing this level of lethargy in the Mac MATLAB version. It is almost like
something is running interpreted, and not compiled.

My suggestion is to install 64-bit Vista, which Bootcamp now supports, and
run MATLAB on the Windows partition till a better Mac version is released.
The good news is that the Mac Pro is an amazing Windows machine, quite a
bit faster than its Windows counterparts!

- Sridhar

Hi,

I just posted one message enquiring the slow performance of
vista 64-bit vs linux. The link is below:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/167933

I am curious to find out what others have to say?

Thanks.
Suresh



> My suggestion is to install 64-bit Vista, which Bootcamp
now supports, and
> run MATLAB on the Windows partition till a better Mac
version is released.
> The good news is that the Mac Pro is an amazing Windows
machine, quite a
> bit faster than its Windows counterparts!
>
> - Sridhar
>
>