slow simulation

[azein]

Dear Andre,

All the simulations I do with PVsyst (I'm using version 6.1.20) use maximum 12% of the processor.

With a detailed electrical shading calculation, it usually takes me an hour or so to complete the simulation.

Is it possible to increase the processor usage in order to accelerate the simulation?

Best regards,

Adnan

[Julien Rosener]

Dear Adnan,

Basically we encourage users to execute simulation going from very basic project to more complex one: following that you do not have to execute a lot of "big" simulations. That's how it should be used, but we know it is not always possible.

Indeed there are a lot of calculations, however the processor usage is quite small: this is because there are a few other things that could explain why it takes time. Most of the time, allocating memory (RAM) and accessing files takes much more time that the computing itself. That's why "increasing the processor usage" will only happen if we are able to reduce drastically accesses to RAM and/or file system. Doing some parallel computing could also be an idea to improve simulations.

This is definitely not an easy job but there are still things to improve. This is in our TODO list, stay tuned.

Bests regards,

Julien.

[azein]

Salut Julien,

I understand that improving the calculation times is a hard job, thanks for making the effort.

But how can you explain that the same simulation goes like 3 times faster on another computer than on mine, while only 41Mb of memory is used by PVsyst all along the simulation(I usually have like 2GB free RAM available out of my 4GB total)?

What can I do to match the speeds achieved by another computers?

btw, I have an SSD hard disk, but I think that doesn't affect the simulation speed.

Adnan

resources usage

[Julien Rosener]

But how can you explain that the same simulation goes like 3 times faster on another computer than on mine, while only 41Mb of memory is used by PVsyst all along the simulation(I usually have like 2GB free RAM available out of my 4GB total)?

 

Indeed this looks strange. I would suggest to export/import the full workspace to have exactly the same user data in both computers (if it was not already the case). If the difference is still there, we are interested to get your data/workspace to try to reproduce slow simulations on our testing machines.

 

btw, I have an SSD hard disk, but I think that doesn't affect the simulation speed.

 

There are definitely not a lot of file system I/O in PVsyst. Indeed it should not affect the speed.

Julien.

[azein]

What do you mean by the whole "workspace"?

What I'm doing is a project export (with all the components used), and then running the same simulation.

I tried it now on a desktop with 2Gb RAM DDR2, 64-bit, intel CPU Quad @ 2.4GHz and it takes half the time it requires on my laptop with 4Gb RAM DDR3, 64-bit, intel i5 @ 1.8Ghz. (respectively 2m10s, 3m35s)

What other information would you need to make the comparison?

Adnan

edit: I noticed that on my laptop (where the speed is slow), the task manager says that PVsyst is using 12% of the CPU, while in the detailed view (right click in task manager, go to details), it says it is using 25%. (photos below)

[Julien Rosener]

What do you mean by the whole "workspace"?

 

It is all your user data (basically the directory C:\Users\\PVsyst6_Data). You can manage your workspace (import/export/switch to) from Main menu >> Files >> Workspace.

 

I tried it now on a desktop with 2Gb RAM DDR2, 64-bit, intel CPU Quad @ 2.4GHz and it takes half the time it requires on my laptop with 4Gb RAM DDR3, 64-bit, intel i5 @ 1.8Ghz. (respectively 2m10s, 3m35s)

 

I need to check if running on 4 cores increase the speed even we are not using parallel execution. One of the best way to help us to reproduce something on our test machines, is to export and give us the full workspace: in that case we will be in the same software environment.

 

edit: I noticed that on my laptop (where the speed is slow), the task manager says that PVsyst is using 12% of the CPU, while in the detailed view (right click in task manager, go to details), it says it is using 25%. (photos below)

 

No idea. I would also expect the same value on both dialogs.