Matlab programs run faster on laptop than on dual quad

Is there something wrong? I run the same program on my laptop and my desktop, same version of Matlab (desktop has XP, laptop vista). All the quad cores are being used What is slowing Matlab down on the desktop, should it not run faster than a laptop? Thanks, any help appreciated.

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

Same thing happens to me!

I use an 18GB RAM, 3.0GHz quad-core desktop that's slower than my 2.5GHz 4GB RAM dual core laptop; both Macs, both same generation/software versions/OS versions etc.

Answer 2

[Jason Ross]

I'm not really all that surprised, as you don't post the actual hardware specs of the laptop and desktop host. But on a basic level, you have:

• different system boards (bus speeds, memory speeds, hard drive speeds, memory bandwidth, network speed)
• different operating system version (drivers are different, architecture is different)

And you might also have

• different programs running on each machine (AV client, Outlook, other utilities, system path is different)
• different processors (hyperthreading versus no hyperthreading, clock speed, cache)
• different bitnesses (32 versus 64 bit)

Also, is everything local to the machine(s) in question, or are you running from a network drive?

Sean's setup is much more of an Apples to Apples comparison.

Answer 3

[Jan]

How bizarre! Please post the relevant part of the code and the Matlab version number.

• If you create a comlex OpenGL animation with a lot of intersecting triangles, the higher screen resolution of the faster computer can eat up all speed advantages.
• A naive multi-threading approach can be counter-productive: Starting 8 threads on a 4-core hyper-threading processor to filter a 20x8 matrix consumes more time than performing the complete operation in the main thread. Especially the mutual invalidation of the cache-lines would waste a lot of time. But as far as I know, no MATLAB function uses such too naive methods.
• A virus checker can need a lot of processing time, e.g. if it checks each file access and a file is written byte by byte.

Answer 4

[Paul]

Thanks, that could be the problem, it is the same version of matlab, same program. No animation.Will suspend the virus checker when matlab is running.

Answer 5

[sushmitha kp]

This is my system specs, it really takes hours together to load start page of matlab 2018a.How do i really deal with it,i am working in simulink on vehicle modelling,bad interface of matlab with the system making it very hard to work with it,help me in resolving it.