Which package did you use for the benchmark plot? :-) - Karl
On 05/03/2013, at 3:23 PM, Craig DeForest <[email protected]> wrote: > Gnuplot doesn't really shine for speed, or even for being particularly > elegant - though I tried to encapsulate and regularize the horror. To be > honest, if you're going for speed Prima is a better bet, and in the long run > its prospects are pretty darned good. That's why we need to make sure it's > present and advertised in the next few releases, IMHO. > > On the other hand, Gnuplot isn't horribly slow either. Here are some Q&D > benchmarks on my c. 2011 macbook with the fast-pipe patch to gnuplot 4.6. I > ran the below subroutine in a loop to collect the data. The green crosshairs > is the performance at a million points (about 2.5 sec); the blue crosshairs > is the performance at 1 sec (380,000 points). > > sub plot_n_points { > my $n = shift; > use Time::HiRes q/time/; > $x = random($n); $y = random($n); > $w=gpwin(x11); > $t0 = time; > $w->plot(with=>'dots',$x,$y); > $t1 = time; > return $t1-$t0; > } > > <points-performance.png> > > > On Mar 4, 2013, at 7:58 PM, Karl Glazebrook <[email protected]> wrote: > >> If GNUplot can plot a million points or a 4096^2 image with a delay < 1s and >> no memory disaster then that would be fast enough for me. >> >> I wish there was a better solution >> >> Karl >> >> >> >> On 04/03/2013, at 2:04 AM, Henning Glawe wrote: >> >>> On Sun, Mar 03, 2013 at 10:04:45PM +1100, Karl Glazebrook wrote: >>>> I don't know how 'modern' PLplot is. The documentation still talks about >>>> Tektronix terminals! >>>> >>>> I did some googling, DISLIN seemed the closest but is only semi-frree. >>>> >>>> In astronomy people really only use pgplot at the c/f77 level. (At a >>>> higher level they use language specific graphics, e.g. IDL, IRAF, Python, >>>> sm (!), gnuplot, MMA). >>>> >>>> What about other scientific fields? What do people you know use? >>> >>> In my field (computational quantum physics/chemistry), computation and >>> visualization are usually treated separately. Typically, the actual >>> numerical simulations are very heavy (taking CPU-days or even CPU-weeks on >>> current HPC-Clusters). >>> The visualization is performed in a separate step, where different "classes" >>> of tools are employed: >>> * Special purpuse tools for molecule/crystal visualization, which show: >>> - crystal structures >>> - densities either on cutting planes or as equipotential surfaces >>> Tools belonging to this class are: >>> - xcrysden http://www.xcrysden.org/ >>> - v-sim http://www-drfmc.cea.fr/L_Sim/V_Sim/index.en.html >>> * General-purpose plotting tools with a focus on 2D-visualization: >>> - gnuplot http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/ >>> - grace http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ >>> * General-purpose plotting tools with more focus on 3D-visualization: >>> - OpenDX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_OpenDX >>> (Official website seems to be down) >>> Learning curve is quite steep, interface is a bit awkward to use (for >>> modern standards) >>> - paraview http://www.paraview.org/ >>> Easier to use than OpenDX; very powerful visualization tool, integrated >>> python scripting support for >>> - sources (data generation) >>> - filters (data processing) >>> - general-purpose macros >>> >>>> Looks dismal. Perhaps the moral is people who put significant effort in to >>>> visuals tend to go commercial? >>> >>> I don't think so. You can get quite good results out of free >>> visualization tools, altough sometimes you may have to tweak the settings a >>> bit. One very good example for this is gnuplot; the default settings have >>> not >>> changed much in the past 20 years (think backwards compatibility), but with >>> some modifications in your gnuplot scripts, plots may look a lot more >>> attractive. This is one of the websites showing how to do this: >>> http://www.gnuplotting.org >>> >>> For paraview, there are some good examples in the image gallery: >>> http://www.paraview.org/paraview/project/imagegallery.php >>> >>> >>> Maybe we have to go back to the question what _kind_ of visualization >>> support >>> we need to have available directly within PDL. >>> >>> In my opinion, a very simple plotting interface used mainly for >>> debugging/development is enough. >>> For anything beyond this, there are really good plotting tools available >>> also >>> as free software, we just need to be able to export data in a format >>> readable >>> by them. >>> >>> -- >>> c u >>> henning >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Perldl mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl >
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