Pfeiffer Report Benchmark Analysis The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark Performance and productivity with the Power Mac and Mac OS X The maturation of a new hardware platform When Apple introduced the Power Mac in June 2003, the new generation of the Power Mac line was widely recognized as an important step in the evolution of the Macintosh platform and propelled Apple s professional offerings to the highest levels of performance and productivity in personal workstations. Combined with the core system architecture provided with Mac OS X 10.3, the Power Mac redefined the expectations of the market by providing a 64-bit workstation capable of running 32-bit applications natively. The arrival of the dual 2.5GHz Power Mac represents the first major evolution of the new hardware platform, providing faster processors and a finetuned hardware architecture. Performance and productivity The computer industry is generally very focalized on pure performance figures: Common analysis of hardware platforms emphasizes pure number crunching power (often based on processor benchmarks that bear no relation to the user s everyday work reality) over productivity. But while there is no question that processing power is an essential aspect, the overall productivity in everyday work situations will depend on the balanced combination of hardware and system software aspects. This benchmarking project analyzes both aspects, but focuses particularly on productivity aspects in concrete work situations encountered by creative professionals. About this report This report presents the key findings of the 2.5GHz Power Mac Benchmark Project conducted by Pfeiffer Consulting. It compares system, networking, and application performance and productivity of the dual 2.5GHz Power Mac with two commonly used legacy platforms, the 450MHz Power Mac G3 and the 733MHz Power Mac G4. Productivity measures conducted for this project focused on commonly encountered bottlenecks in workflow productivity, and were conducted using the Pfeiffer Consulting Methodology for Productivity Benchmarking. Please see the Methodology sidebar on page 3 for details on hardware configuration and benchmarks. For a detailed description of the benchmark methodology, benchmark details, and complete results, please download the 2.5GHz Power Mac Benchmark Report at www.pfeifferreport.com. Major Findings The dual 2.5GHz Power Mac provides significant performance and productivity increases over earlier hardware generations. The hardware architecture of the Power Mac significantly accelerates application performance as well as system operations and network performance over the Power Mac G3 and G4 lines of computers. Photoshop performance of the dual 2.5GHz Power Mac in common operations is more than four to six times faster than with the 733MHz Power Mac G4 equipped with 1GB of RAM. Multiprocessing can provide very significant productivity gains when using several applications in parallel. About Pfeiffer Consulting Pfeiffer Consulting is an independent technology research institute and consulting operation focused on the needs of publishing, digital content production, and new media professionals. Download the complete 2.5GHz Power Mac Benchmark Report at www.pfeifferreport.com. Pfeiffer Consulting 01001011 The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark 1
Advances of the Hardware Platform Major Points The 2.5GHz Power Mac sets new standards of performance for the creative workflow. Photoshop performance of commonly performed operations is up to 15 times faster on the 2.5GHz Power Mac than on a 450MHz Power Mac G3 equipped with 1GB of RAM. System operations such as local copy operations are four times faster on the new Power Mac than on the 733MHz Power Mac G4 equipped with 1GB of RAM. How important is the system architecture? A professional computing environment is an extremely complex accumulation of individual elements, hardware, system software, application software, and peripherals. To function in a satisfying way, all of these pieces need to be well balanced and adjusted to work together in an optimal way. Some of these aspects are quite well known: Most professional users are well aware that ample RAM is in important aspect to obtain peak performance from a system. Others are more elusive. Sometimes it is not enough to compare technical specifications to assess a system: As an example, file copy performance can vary from one system to the next, even if the physical hard drive has identical specifications. Another, even more surprising example is network performance: in our benchmarks for this project, file copy performance to a network server was significantly faster on the new Power Mac than on the Power Mac G4 despite the fact that both systems support Gigabit Ethernet, and were benchmarked using the same network and server, running exactly the same version of the operating system. In other words, real-world benchmarks are the only reliable way to assess performance and productivity. Photoshop Performance: Key Figures This chart shows performance measured in common Photoshop operations using a 50MB file. The 2.5GHz Power Mac offers performance that is at least four times superior to the 733MHz Power Mac G4 despite the fact that the older computer was equipped with 1GB of RAM for this benchmark. Compared with the 450MHz Power Mac G4 (also equipped with 1GB of RAM), the new model is up to almost 13 times faster. (Benchmarks using lower memory configurations for the older Macintosh models show even greater performance differential.) Ÿ 2 The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark
Methodology This benchmark project was conducted by Pfeiffer Consulting for Apple Computer and analyzes the performance and productivity of the dual 2.5GHz processor Power Mac introduced in June 2004, as compared with the 450MHz Power Mac G3 and the 733MHz Power Mac G4. The performance benchmarks included system performance, network/server performance using Gigabit Ethernet and an Apple Xserve server, as well as application performance benchmarks. Productivity benchmarks were conducted using a set of workflow integration measures, executed with Adobe InDesign CS, Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, Adobe Acrobat 6.0.1, and QuarkXPress 6.1. Specific benchmarks were conducted to measure the impact of multiple processors on productivity. Benchmarks were conducted on standard hardware configurations. The Power Mac was equipped with 2GB of RAM. Legacy platforms were tested in two memory configurations: 256MB as well as 1GB of RAM. All systems were equipped with the standard hard drives shipped with the computer. All hard drives were reformatted using a single partition before testing. All benchmarks were run on a standard, unmodified installation of Mac OS X 10.3.4. For complete results and descriptions of the benchmark methodology as well as a detailed system configuration, please download the complete benchmark report from http://www.pfeifferreport.com For more information, please contact research@pfeifferreport.com Fine-tuning hardware performance Compared with other computer manufacturers, Apple is in a privileged position: Since it controls both hardware and system software and in some cases even the application software it can fine-tune and perfect the overall performance and user experience to a much higher degree than would be possible for other computer manufacturers. As a result, the performance and productivity increases that can be observed when a new generation of Macintosh hardware arrives on the market is usually significantly higher than what might be expected when analyzing only isolated aspects of the computer. This observation is particularly true for the dual processor Power Mac. The processor itself, the 64-bit PowerPC, is a significant advance over older Power PC processors, such as the G4, used in previous Power Mac models. However, the increased performance of the system also relies heavily on the architecture surrounding the processor: In dual processor models, each processor has its own dedicated front-side bus running at 1.25GHz, capable of transferring data and instructions at up to 10 GBps. Memory management also plays an important role in system performance. Currently, the Power Mac can use up to 8GB of RAM. (The PowerPC processor is capable of addressing a theoretical maximum of 4 terabytes of physical memory.) On the operating system level, each application has its own memory space; on multiprocessor machines, each application can therefore use the memory space that has been allocated, without conflicting with other applications running concurrently. This capability explains why multiprocessing running two applications in parallel provides significant productivity increases on the Power Mac (see page 8). Benchmark results document the efficiency of these architecture enhancements: The Power Mac is significantly faster than previous models. That an advanced hardware platform shines in pure performance benchmarks such as heavy-duty image processing tasks is more or less expected. What is more surprising is the fact that the hardware architecture also clearly impacts operations that draw less on the pure number-crunching power of the processor. Even for mundane operations such as copying files to a server or duplicating large volumes of data on the local hard drive, the new Power Mac provides significant performance and productivity increases over older models (see sidebars). System Performance (Local Copy) Input/Output: Key Figures 21 sec Folder Copy (100MB, small files) 1 min 25 sec 1 min 31 sec 2 min 39 sec 3 min 41 sec This report was created by Pfeiffer Consulting (http://www.pfeifferconsulting.com). All texts and illustrations Pfeiffer Consulting 2004. Reproduction prohibited without previous written approval. Charts: Fischer Design. Reproduction prohibited without prior written permission. For further information, please contact research@pfeifferreport.com. Adobe, Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Mac, Macintosh, Mac OS and Power Mac are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. Finder is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 0 50 100 150 200 250 Even relatively mundane tasks such as duplicating files on the local hard drive is significantly faster on the Power Mac than on older models: Duplicating a 100MB folder containing several thousand small files took more than four times longer on the Power Mac G4. The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark 3 Pfeiffer Consulting 2002 Reproduction prohibited without prior written permission.
The Mac OS X Creative Workflow Major Points The 2.5GHz Power Mac can provide a productivity increase of up to 10 times over older systems, based on combined workflow benchmarks. Frequently encountered workflow operations such as the roundtrip between a page layout application and a graphics program for editing tasks are about two to ten times faster on the 2.5GHz Power Mac than on older systems. The evolution of frequently used data formats significantly increases the need for processing power and system throughput in modern creative workflows. The emergence of a new creative environment On a basic level, the creative workflow apparently has not changed dramatically over the past 10 years: We still use page layout, image processing, and illustration packages; we continue to integrate graphic elements from different sources in different ways. And by and large we have been using the same core applications for a very long time. And even on the operating system level, one might be tempted to see Mac OS X just as a new version of the same operating system that creative professionals have been using around the world for many years. But some changes arrive slowly and cannot be easily pinned to a single event or technology. This is exactly what has been happening in creative markets over the past few years: A profound wave of change, triggered by the combined arrival of several new technologies and possibilities, is redefining the way creative professionals work. Mac OS X is playing a pivotal role in this evolution, and in more ways than one might think. Some of the evolutions in Apple s UNIX-based operating system, such as mature color management support, integrated PDF capabilities, and robust support for fonts and typography, are directly targeted at creative markets. Others are more subtle, but change the way we work with files and data. A good Workflow Benchmarks: Major Results Workflow Benchmarks (average of 21 operations tested) 16 sec 41 sec Workflow Benchmarks (Average) 1 min 27 sec 1 min 7 sec 2 min 53 sec 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 The chart on the left shows the average results for the complete suite of workflow benchmarks (see sidebar on page 5). Even in these productivity measures, which rely only partially on processor performance, the 2.5GHz Power Mac was over more than three times faster than the Power Mac G4. Comparison with the Power Mac G3 in a low-memory configuration shows greater than tenfold productivity increase. The chart on the right compares performance figures of the Full-Resolution Preview feature in QuarkXPress 6.1 on the different systems. The amount of available RAM frequently has a strong impact on performance. 4 The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark
example of this change is the ability to preview a great variety of file types (such as TIFF, JPEG, Photoshop, and PDF) directly in the Finder, without having to launch a viewer application. In parallel, the hardware environment is evolving alongside the system software, and this can have a profound impact on the way we work. The combination of Mac OS X, supporting symmetric multiprocessing and preemptive multitasking, combined with the hardware and networking performance of the Power Mac gives creative professionals the opportunity to use their computer in ways that would not have been practical or even possible on earlier iterations of the platform (see page 8). The new application and data environment In parallel, we are witnessing a number of other profound changes in the creative environment. The maturation of digital photography has changed the way we think about pictures, in terms of both quantity and quality. Where we used to deal with a few dozen or at worst hundreds of pictures, we are now handling thousands or tens of thousands of digital images. Sixteen-bit color (which uses 16 bits of data per individual color channel instead of 8 bits in the case of standard 24-bit color images) has redefined editing and retouching possibilities but it also significantly increases hardware requirements to deal with the additional data. Camera RAW file formats manage to preserve all the data captured by the sensor in a camera, and affordable prosumer digital SLR cameras are about to open professional-level digital photography to a vast number of creative professionals. Even the application environment has evolved dramatically. Mac OS X has triggered a considerable number of new applications for the creative workflow, and the system and networking capabilities of the new hardware platform open up new levels of integration between applications. There is no doubt that we are witnessing the emergence of a new type of creative workflow, centered around tight integration of highly sophisticated software applications and increasingly versatile data types. However, this evolution wouldn t make sense without the glue of a modern operating system combined with an optimized hardware architecture. In that sense, the arrival of the Power Mac fits in perfectly: Combined with Mac OS X, it provides an impressive environment for the modern creative workflow. About the Workflow Benchmarks The workflow benchmarks conducted for this project were designed to document the performance difference linked to a variety of frequent performance bottlenecks encountered in the creative workflow. The benchmarks combined a number of frequent, time-consuming operations, such as roundtrips to a graphics application to perform a minor editing task, or the time necessary to generate a PDF file for client approval from a complex page layout. The benchmarks were conducted in two workflow situations, combining QuarkXPress 6.1 with Adobe Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS on one hand, and with the Adobe Creative Suite, using Adobe InDesign CS, Photoshop CS, and Illustrator CS on the other. For detailed information on the benchmark methodology as well as complete results of all the benchmarks, please download the complete 2.5GHz Power Mac Benchmark Report at www.pfeifferreport.com. Mac OS X Creative Applications: Key Workflow Productivity Figures Workflow Benchmarks (Illustrator Roundtrip) Workflow Benchmarks (Photoshop Roundtrip) 23 sec 12 sec 45 sec 44 sec Illustrator Roundtrip 49 sec Photoshop Roundtrip (50MB File) 1 min 28 sec 59 sec 1 min 6 sec 1 min 4 sec 3 min 19 sec 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 Application integration is an essential part of the creative workflow, and the time spent switching between applications accounts for a significant part of overall productivity. The charts presented here show the performance increase when performing a roundtrip between the page layout application and frequently used graphics applications such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. The benchmark measures the time necessary to switch from QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign to the graphics application, open a graphic, perform a simple editing operation, save the file to disk, and update the page layout. The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark 5
System and Networking Performance Major Points The 2.5GHz Power Mac provides significantly faster network performance than older models. Network copy performance of the 2.5GHz Power Mac is almost twice as fast than with the 733MHz Power Mac G4, and up to more than six times faster than with the 450MHz Power Mac G3. The increases in network performance of the new Power Mac can be found even when compared with older models equipped with Gigabit Ethernet controllers. The importance of system and network performance However important the pure computational power of a hardware platform may be for high-profile applications, the overall productivity we experience is largely dependent on the complete data throughput a system can handle, and the speed at which it manages to handle everyday tasks. Imagine a computer that would excel at image processing, but would take minutes to write the resulting file to disk, or would not be able to use available network bandwidth. System performance is one of the most elusive aspects of the computer. What exactly is it that makes a computer feel fast? What gives us the impression that the hardware we are using does not slow us down? If your work involves frequent switching between applications, the perceived speed of your computer will probably depend as much on the hard drive in your system as on the raw processing power of the processor you use. Likewise, a slow display card will contribute to the perceived speed of a system, although it will have little or no impact on the actual data processing portion of your work. A number of factors influence system performance, but insufficient memory will almost always slow a computer down. To demonstrate this point, the benchmarks for this project were conducted in a low and high memory configuration for both legacy systems, and the performance difference between the two Network Performance: Detailed Figures Network Copy Performance (Large Files) 50MB (Single File) 100MB (Single File) 200MB (Single File) 1.3 1.9 2.3 5.7 7.2 2.5 3.6 3.6 10.6 11.5 3.3 6.6 6.6 21.2 22.2 0 5 10 15 20 25 Network Copy Performance (Small Files) Network Copy (100MB, small files) 46 sec 1 min 19 sec 1 min 26 sec 2 min 3 sec 2 min 8 sec 0 30 60 90 120 150 The impact of the hardware platform on network operations can be significant: The benchmarks conducted for this project show a significant performance difference between the 2.5GHz Power Mac and the older Power Mac models. In the case of the Power Mac G4, this difference is easily explained by the fact that the Power Mac G3 supports only 10/100BASE-T Ethernet. More surprising is the difference between the new model and the Power Mac G4 tested here: Both computers support Gigabit Ethernet, and it would seem likely that their network performance should be comparable. Nevertheless, the new 2.5GHz Power Mac manages to copy a 100MB folder of small files to the server almost twice as fast as the older Power Mac G4. 6 The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark
System Performance Application Launch Adobe Photoshop CS Adobe Acrobat 6.0.1 QuarkXPress 6.1 8.8 11.4 12.7 15.5 Launch times (first launch after system startup) for key applications in the creative workflow. 17.2 16.7 is often spectacular. (The 2.5GHz Power Mac was equipped with 2GB of RAM for all tests.) Similar observations apply to the capacity and the speed of the hard drive, which has a decisive impact on many system operations. But neither the speed of the hard drive nor vast quantities of RAM will live up to their potential if the underlying hardware architecture is insufficient to transfer large amounts of data efficiently. Thus the fact that the 2.5GHz Power Mac provides up to 10 GBps bandwidth between the processor and the rest of the system is essential for the overall system performance. Network performance is another aspect where the overall system architecture is crucial for the complete throughput that can be achieved. On a computer equipped with Gigabit Ethernet, the network is not the main bottleneck in moving data. If a server on a Gigabit Ethernet network is equipped with a RAID system, saving or copying files over the network to the server is actually faster than saving the same file on a local hard drive. Hardware aspects such as these will have a profound impact on creative workflows: Fast networks have become not only technically viable, but also very affordable. Hardware advances such as these will redefine how creative workgroups operate, making it both easier and faster to share data and to optimize the collaborative process. 25.9 31.6 34.7 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Xserve and Mac OS X Server The network and server benchmarks for this project were conducted using an Xserve server running Mac OS X Server 10.3.4. All computers covered in the benchmark project were connected to the server using a Gigabit Ethernet switch. This setup (or Mac OS X Server running on a Power Mac G4 or ) is a frequently encountered network scenario in creative workflows, since Mac OS X Server has much lower administration and maintenance requirements than other server software on the market, yet it provides the benefits of a fast and reliable UNIX-based server architecture that is compatible with the majority of network protocols on the market. Interestingly, with Gigabit Ethernet, the network is not the main bottleneck anymore. On a server equipped with a RAID drive, saving a file to the server can be faster than saving it to the local hard drive. The Impact of the Hardware Platform Performance of common operations such as opening or saving a large file is dependent on a number of aspects of a hardware platform. While the speed of the hard drive is of course important the new 2.5GHz Power Mac is equipped with a Serial ATA hard drive that is faster than the hard drive technologies used in older models it would not be sufficient to explain the difference in performance encountered in these benchmarks. The 2.5GHz Power Mac managed to open a 100MB Photoshop file more than three times faster than the 733MHz Power Mac G4. This performance underlines the maturity of the overall hardware architecture, and the high optimization of different hardware aspects in the new system. It is interesting to note the impact of available RAM in these operations: The older Power Mac G3 equipped with 1GB of RAM manages to complete the operation faster than the more powerful Power Mac G4, when equipped with less memory. System Performance Open 100MB Photoshop File Save 100MB Photoshop File 2 2.7 6.6 6.2 16.1 17.3 22.3 40.3 55.9 65.8 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark 7
Multiprocessing in the Creative Workflow Major Points Who needs multiprocessing? Mac OS X supports symmetric multiprocessing, automatically distributing several processing threads or tasks over multiple processors. Productivity increases linked to multiprocessing can be significant, even when using applications that are not multiprocessor aware. Multiprocessing allows for tasks that would have locked up the computer previously, such as burning a CD or a DVD, to run in the background without slowing down other applications. The need for multiprocessing is usually associated with high-profile, computing-intensive tasks, such as processing large Photoshop files, compiling digital video, or rendering complex 3Dscenes. In general, an application needs to be specially adapted to use multiple processors on a single task. The number of these programs is relatively limited; on Mac OS 9, only these specifically optimized applications would benefit from a multiprocessor hardware. Mac OS X, on the other hand, supports symmetric multiprocessing: When running on a dual processor computer such as the 2.5GHz Power Mac, the operating system is capable of spreading the load of several threads (in the case of a multithreaded application) or of different applications running concurrently. In practical terms, multiprocessing can have a significant impact on productivity. Tasks that used to lock up the computer, such as burning a DVD, can now run in the background without slowing down other applications, or users can switch to Photoshop while generating a PDF in the page layout application. For users accustomed to earlier versions of the operating system, this capability means changing some work habits, but the benefit is immediately visible. In the multiprocessing benchmarks conducted for this project, applying a Photoshop filter while generating a PDF file in InDesign took only a few seconds more than one of the tasks performed individually. The Productivity Impact of Multiprocessing Multiprocessing can have a significant impact on productivity, not only when using a single, multiprocessing-capable application such as Photoshop, but also in everyday applications. Unlike with older, single-processor computers, running several tasks at the same time on the dual Power Mac is a very efficient way of getting work done faster. The benchmark on the left shows that the time necessary to complete two tasks simultaneously is almost identical to the time necessary for completing one of the tasks alone. Even running three tasks in parallel is almost twice as fast as completing the same tasks in succession. 8 The 2.5GHz Power Mac Creative Workflow Benchmark