[K12OSN] TuxMath test on 8 core machine with teamed NICs 16GB RAM

[Jim Kronebusch]

On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:53:52 -0500, James P. Kinney III wrote
> Bad stats, Jim. That's not good news as everyone I see whose seen
> tuxmath goes ape over it (especially the kids).
> 
> The version that ships with K12LTSP is a bazillion years old (the
> abandoned version). The new version is 1.5.8 (tux hides in igloos and
> cities are not destroyed, includes "lessons" and does negative
> numbers!).
> 
> The code is essentially unchanged at the base level (SDL is an easy
> cross platform toolset but is very inefficient). I don't have access to
> a large client count at the moment but I'll check the new version vs.
> the old version on Opteron systems ASAP.
> 
> I'm really floored that the hardware you threw at this test choked so
> badly. I suspect that the different memory management processes between
> Opteron and Xeon will show up here (my testing last year showed an
> average performance boost of 30+% in thin client speed between Opteron
> and Xeon - Simultaneous launch of 24 OOo instances took 65 seconds on
> Xeons and 42 seconds with freshly booted servers and client. Speed up
> was even more dramatic with cached copy).

I did not even think about the TuxMath version, here is the output of the Edubuntu
repository:

Package: tuxmath
Priority: optional
Section: games
Installed-Size: 2052
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Holger Levsen <debian at layer-acht.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.0.1-1build1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.5-0ubuntu1), libsdl-image1.2 (>= 1.2.5), libsdl-mixer1.2 (>=
1.2.6), libsdl1.2debian (>= 1.2.10-1)
Filename: pool/main/t/tuxmath/tuxmath_1.0.1-1build1_i386.deb
Size: 1420908
MD5sum: 8476a921bca0b36584f1b823d849dee3
SHA1: 738c9b966e32350564b3d776fb9117688afef6e8
SHA256: 793faa95d45091a22477ff930cdc68723983fb94a06d3a9d1beebbbcf09efb60
Description: math game for kids with Tux
 "Tux, of Math Command" ("TuxMath," for short) is an
 educational arcade game starring Tux, the Linux mascot!
 Based on the classic arcade game "Missile Command," Tux
 must defend his cities. In this case, though, he must do
 it by solving math problems.
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu
Task: edubuntu-live

So it appears the version is 1.0.1-1build1?  I'm guessing that is fairly old.  Maybe
I'll download the new version and give it a try.  

As far as memory usage, I don't see any problems with concurrent Firefox and OpenOffice
and 75 users, and RAM usage with those users and TuxMath never get above 4GB.  With
other things we can get to 6GB usage and no slow downs at all.  I really don't think
this is a RAM or memory problem, but the code hogging CPU usage.  However I will state
I'm likely not educated enough to make an accurate assessment, but the data I found
seems to lean that direction.

Jim

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by the Cotter Technology 
Department, and is believed to be clean.