Purpose Program Planet

The purpose of program Planet is two fold:

1. First to test two CPU's with a program that uses parallel programming.
2. Secondly to write a program that simultes the movement of planets around the Sun.

The following three CPU's were tested:

1. Intel Pentium 4 2.80 GHzThis one has a CPU Mark of 415.
2. Intel Pentium 4 3.00 GHzThis one has a CPU Mark of 491.
3. Intel Core i5 M 460 @ 2.53 GHzThis one has a CPU Mark of 2582.

CPU 1 is a Single core and supports 1 Thread.
CPU 2 is a Single core and supports 2 Threads.
CPU 3 is a DuaL core and supports 4 Threads.

For executables (.exe files) of the programs tested select VB2010 exe.zip.
The Zip files contains the files VStest1.EXE, VStest2.EXE, Planet.exe, PlanetPP.exe, Planets.exe, Planet3dSimple.EXE, Fibonacci.exe and FibonacciPP.exe

• VStest1.EXE and VStest2.EXE are 2 programs to test parallel programming explained here: CPU Performance - Part 1
• The following planet simulation programs are all discussed in this chapter:
  • Planet.exe, PlanetPP.exe and Planets.exe are Visual Basic 2010 planet simulation programs.
  • Planet3dSimple.exe is a Visual Basic 5.0 program to simulate the 7 planets. The program requires the MSVBVM50.dll file.
    
  • Planet1.xls is an Excel 2003 planet simulation program which uses (Visual) Basic language.
• The following Fibonacci number programs are explained here: Fibonacci Benchmark
  • Fibonacci and FibonacciPP are a Visual Basic 2010 program which calculates Fibonacci numbers
  • Fibonacci50 is a Visual Basic 5.0 program. The program requires the MSVBVM50.dll file.
    
• The Performance Benchmark tests the performance of mathematical package of subroutines written in Visual Basic 5.0, Visual Studio 2010 or Excel 2003.
  The following programs are tested: VB performance, VB2010 performance and performance.xls.
• The Findprim Benchmark also tests the same mathematical package of subroutines. The purpose of the programs tested is to factorize a large number into its two prime numbers.
  The following programs are tested: VB findprim, VB2010 findprim and findprim.xls.

When you try to execute the "VB 2010" programs may be the following error message is displayed: "To run this application, you first must install one of the following versions of the .NET Framework: v4.0.30319". You can get this download from: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Web Installer) . In my case this happened with CPU 2. For a comparison between CPU 1 and CPU 2 go to: Benchmark Pentium 4 3.0. The fact that CPU 2 is slow in some tests is not caused by this download.

• For a detailed evaluation of Visual Basic 2010 go here: Visual Basic 2010 Evaluation
• For a discussion about parallel programming with Visual Basic 2010 go here: Visual Basic 2010 Parallel Programming techniques
• For a general discussion about parallel programming and threads go here: Advantages and disadvantages. This document also contains comments about Wikipedia

Operation Planet

When you start the program you get a Control Form which contains of 3 parts.

• The top four lines contain general information about the performance of the program.
  
  • Line 1 contains communication values for each thread. To see those values you have to select the Monitor push button
  • Line 2 contains the active Processor numbers.
  • Line 3 contains the performance factors for each thread. This is the average number of cycles per second.
  • Line 4 contains five parameters: # Proc, delta t, count, # of planets and hold.
    • # Proc This parameter shows the number of active threads or processors. The user can set this parameter before the simulation but also change during the simulation.
    • delta t This parameter shows delta time or step size in seconds.
    • Count This parameter shows the time in number of seconds. This parameter is cleared when the number of active threads is changed via pushbutton Start or Cancel
    • # planets This parameter shows the number of planets.
    • hold This parameter shows the revolution # of planet 1 (the inner most planet) when the program holds. -1 means no hold.
• The center line contains 4 buttons:
  • Start. The purpose of the Start button is to start the simulation. The # of threads (virtual processors) used during the simulation is identified by the parameter # Proc.
  • Stop/Restart The purpose of the Stop Button is to temporary hold the simulation or to restart the simulation after a hold.
  • End. The purpose of the End Button is:
    • First to terminate all threads.
    • Secondly in case all the threads are finished to end the program.
  • Monitor The purpose of the Monitor Button is to monitor the communication between Thread 1 (the master) and the other threads (The slaves)
• The bottom 4 lines contains the actueel state of the simulation of four planets.

The user should specify the parameters # Proc, delta t, Count and Hold before the Start Button is pressed.
During the simulation the user can change the # Proc parameter in order to modify the # of threads in operation.
The user can change the Hold parameter after the Stop Button is pressed or when the simulation goes into hold. This happens when planet # 1 reaches the number of cycles identified by the Hold parameter.

Planet - CPU 3

Planet - CPU 1

What the Planet application tests show is that CPU 3 is only better compared to CPU 1, when CPU 3 uses 2 Processors.
CPU 1 outperforms CPU 3 when CPU 3 uses 1, 3 or 4 Processors.

Planet Application listings: PlanetForm.vb and PlanetForm.Designer.vb

Program Description Planet

The program Planet is partly based on the program Fibonacci.
The program Fibonacci was described in the Microsoft MSDN document: BackGroundWorker See Visual Basic 2010 evaluation for details about documentation issues.
From that program only the subroutine: InitializeComponent() is used. The subroutine InitializeComponent() creates all the tools (Textboxes, Labels, Backgroundworkers etc) on the Planet Form.

The program Planet is also based on the program VStest2 with certain modifications or additions. The program uses the following subroutines: Init, Test and Printa

• Init The major function is to calculate the distance x(i) in the x direction and the speed vy(i) in the y direction such that each planet follows a circle. The masses m(i) of each planet are zero except the mass m(0) of the Sun.
• Test This function uses the variable cnt3(). cnt3() is used as an individual iteration counter for each planet. The function of the subroutine Test is to test if all the iteration counters cnt3() are equal.
• Printa The function is to print the values of a certain array.

Program PlanetPP is functionel identical as Planet.
The difference is in the way Parallel Programming is implemented.

• The program Planet the backgroundworker for both the Master and the Slaves
• The program PlanetPP does not use a backgroundworker for the Master, only for the Slaves

To learn more about implementation details go to this document:Visual Basic 2010 Parallel Programming techniques

PlanetPP Application listings: PlanetPPForm.vb and PlanetPPForm.Designer.vb

For a general discussion about parallel programming and threads go here: Advantages and disadvantages . This document also contains comments about Wikipedia

The program PlanetS is functional identical as PlanetPP. The difference is that PlanetS (S = Simple) only supports one processor (thread) and does not use the Backgroundworker, that means all the extra overhead for parallel programming is removed.
The Control Panel shows one parameter: Hold

• When you do not modify the -1 value there is no hold.
  
• When you Enter a value of for example 10 then the simulation will stop after 10 revolutions of planet 1.

The program uses two new variables: Holdst and Holdrev.

PlanetS Application listings: PlanetSForm.vb and PlanetSForm.Designer.vb

Planet1.xls is a program identical as PlanetS but using Excel. The calculations are done in Visual Basic. The original Program was written in the Pentium 4 2.8 GHz using Excel 2003. The program shows the performance on "blad2". There is also a graphic available. For the results go to : planet1.xls
For the source of the program select: planet1.xls.zip

	CPU 1	CPU 2	CPU 3
	P4 2.8	P4 3.0	M 460 i5
CPU Benchmark	415	491	2582
Planet1.xls	2900	2500 - 1600	2200

What the results show is that the performance in the INTEL i5 M 460 CPU is the "not as expected", to say the least.
In the i5 CPU the EXCEL program is running under EXCEL 2007.
Excel 2007 supports Visual Basic and Macro's, however this is not obvious. In order to use Excel 2007 go to the ICON in the top left corner (near Start). Select ICON and goto the bottom right corner were you read: Excel options. Select the options and adjust the Ribbon selection.
For more detail read this: What's new in Microsoft Office Excel 2007. In that document is written:

To improve the performance of Excel, memory management has been increased from 1 GB of memory in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 to 2 GB in Office Excel 2007.
You will also experience faster calculations in large, formula-intensive worksheets because Office Excel 2007 supports multiple processors and multithreaded chipsets.

I agree that Excel 2007 supports multiple processors, but the test don't demonstrate that multiple processors are actual used in parallel.

Performance evaluation

The following table shows performance results for three processors tested.
CPU #1 Supports one processor (thread). CPU #2 2 processors and CPU #3 4 processors
The first column shows the name of the program tested. The second column shows the # of planets tested.

		CPU 1	CPU 2	CPU 3
		P4 2.8	P4 3.0	M 460 i5
Planet	#10	6705		5483 7462 6560 4678
Planet	#100	89		70 112 105 118
PlanetPP	#10	7173		5712 8156 7132 7939
PlanetPP	#100	102	55, 50	75 117 108 125
PlanetS	#10	7020		5545
PlanetS	#100	100	55	75

What those results indicate is that:

• The best performance is CPU 3 with 100 planets and 4 processors (threads)
• The optimum performance for CPU 3 when 2 processors are used.
• CPU 1 is an excellent product.
• CPU 2 is the worst.

For more detail See: CPU Performance Pentium 4

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