> Subject: Sas and Unix CPU Time > Author: Jonathan Miller <NYPRO.JMiller@SDPS.ORG> > Date: 8/31/99 3:49 PM > > Sas processes seem to use an inordinate amount of CPU time on the unix > side. Even one SAS process can bog down the system. Does anyone > know if their is a way to modify SAS CPU usage other than using the > NICE command in unix. > Thanks > > Please send the SAS question to the following address:

Define "inordinate". Compared to other Unix processes, or compared to SAS on other platforms?

What sort of processing are you doing? Data step processing tends to be pretty light on CPU unless dataset compression is selected. Some procedures, particularly advanced statistical procedures, can be quite CPU intensive.

Are you collecting system timing statistics from SAS with the STIMER or (preferably) FULLSTIMER options? If you use the STIMEFMT=Z option (I think, this from memory), you can get uniformly presented timings which can be automajikally analyzed -- in SAS, of course (you'll have to write code to analyze your SAS log).

Many system configuration issues can impact how SAS utilizes resources. Likely culprits are using networked filesystems (NFS, AFS, Samba), software-based RAID systems, and certain filesystem configuration options.

SAS has suggestions on Unix system performance tuning at the following URLs:

http://www.sas.com/service/techsup/tnote/tnote_unix.html (All SAS Unix tech notes)

http://www.sas.com/partners/enterprise/dec/decunx1.html http://www.sas.com/usergroups/sugi/sugi24/abstracts/abs-41.html http://www.sas.com/service/techsup/unotes/V6/7/7199.html http://www.sas.com/service/techsup/unotes/V6/C/C803.html http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/technote/ts229.pdf

-- Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com) What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

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