Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 16:09:04 -0400
Reply-To: "Fehd, Ronald J. (PHPPO)" <rjf2@CDC.GOV>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: "Fehd, Ronald J. (PHPPO)" <rjf2@CDC.GOV>
Subject: Re: Best of SUGI29 - Tips & Tricks
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> From: Choate, Paul@DDS [mailto:pchoate@DDS.CA.GOV]
>
> Would any SUGI29 attendees care to share with SAS-L their
> favorite golden nugget of SAS from the conference?
Paul Kent presented a SEUGI paper
written by someone in one of Europe's largest Insurance companies
that showed some test runs of BigIron
(z/OS: formerly OS/390)
using several CPUs
comparing test suites run under v8.2, v9 and v9 w/3 CPUs
see v9.1 OnLineDoc:
What's New in the SAS 9 and 9.1 Macro Language Facility
new automatic macro variable
-- more correctly named: macro constant --
SYSnCPU contains the current number of CPUs that SAS
can use during the current session.
the number of CPUs can be set in config, invocation,
or (any) options statement
...
PROC OPTIONS GROUP= PERFORMANCE
options CPUcount = <1:1024 or actual>
see also: Threads UtilLoc
the paper presented code which divided the tasks for each CPU
one such subset division was by use of mod operator
and another by expert use of an identifier:
CPU-1 gets all less than '33'
CPU-2 gets all equal to '33'
CPU-3 gets all greater than '33'
interesting main point:
elapsed time may decrease
but CPU time may increase
a side effect was that the EXCP count increased in each of the trials
with the decreases in elapsed time and CPU time for use of more CPUs
some sites charge back mainframe costs based on both CPU time used
and EXCP count, so tripling the EXCP count needs to be factored in,
and could probably be reduced with other tuning.
Paul's down-home example,
-- North Carolina being, as the name implies, just north of
South Carolina, the home of NASCAR: Nat'l Assoc of Stock Car Auto Racers
http://www.nascar.com/
-- was that if you want a car with eight cylinders
you have to pay in one way or another for use of that much horsepower,
in increased gas consumption, maintenance, etc.
Ron Fehd the macro maven CDC Atlanta GA USA RJF2@cdc.gov
see SUGI29 Proceedings
http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi29/toc.html
note: Lex Jansen has SUGI 29 proceedings available
http://www.lexjansen.com/sugi/
http://support.sas.com/usergroups/sugi/intro.html
SUGI 30
April 10-13, 2005
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Gregory S. Nelson, Conference Chair
