Re: [Opengrads-devel] Fwd: Issues with Store-Bought v. Home-Grown builds of Cairo

[Mike F. <mfi...@gm...>]

hi Brian,

of course performance is critical to me too; i use printim for my
production, mainly because i do layers (-t and -b).  i use gxyat on
occasion and it is slower (uses Cairo?) but the graphics better (but
bigger) and -t and -b don't work.  so for production, it'd be important
for me to have the fast gd printim.

thanks /r mike

p.s. are any of you in seattle for the ams?  i'm giving a talk in the
python symposium about my wxmaps and how i use grads.py to give grads an
oop interface



On 1/22/11 1:45 PM, Brian Doty wrote:
> Hi Gary, performance is a high priority. We depend on grads'
> performance in many ways. So we plan on maintaining a "native" X
> interface, similar to what exists in grads now. None of the new
> functionality would be available when the "native" interface is being
> used. But the performance should be essentially the same as is the
> case currently.
>
> Do you do all your graphics through X? Or do you also use printim?
> We are currently planning to drop the GD library in favor of Cairo for
> image production, and that would be a loss of performance. We gain
> anti-aliasing, raster fonts, and transparency. We are not sure as yet
> of the performance implications; if significant we may need to keep
> the GD interface around. We are still figuring these things out.
> Unfortunately we are finding that Cairo performance characteristics
> are platform dependent.... Brian
>
> On Jan 22, 2011, at 4:01 AM, Love, Mr. Gary, Contractor, Code 7542
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jennifer,
>>
>> I like the sound of improved graphics, but even gfast will not be
>> fast enough. The current X11 library version generates a plot in
>> 200-300 milliseconds, 5 times faster. GrADS' current speed is one
>> of its best features which has always been very important to NRL and
>> FNMOC, since our post processing for just one project already takes
>> 30 minutes because so many plots are needed.
>>
>> I hope newer versions of GrADS can still be compiled with the X11
>> libs.
>>
>> Gary
>>
>> From: Jennifer Adams [mailto:jm...@co...]
>> Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 9:36 AM
>> To: ope...@li...
>> Cc: Brian Doty
>> Subject: [Opengrads-devel] Fwd: Issues with Store-Bought v. Home-
>> Grown builds of Cairo
>>
>> Dear All,
>> I just sent this message to the Cairo forum, but I am copying it
>> here to keep you in the loop regarding my progress with Cairo, and
>> to see if you have any suggestions for how to get me out of the weeds.
>> --Jennifer
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: Jennifer Adams <jm...@co...>
>>> Date: January 21, 2011 12:31:50 PM EST
>>> To: cairo <ca...@ca...>
>>> Subject: Issues with Store-Bought v. Home-Grown builds of Cairo
>>>
>>> Dear Experts,
>>>
>>> I apologize in advance for a long email ... I'm just trying to be
>>> thorough. The bottom line is my own build of Cairo compared with
>>> the macports/yum build is MUCH too slow, and I don't know why.
>>>
>>> I am working toward getting Cairo to handle all the graphics for
>>> GrADS, an open-source program for the analysis and display of
>>> meteorological data. The old way of doing graphics in GrADS was a
>>> combination of direct calls to the X11 library (for the X window
>>> interface), calls to the gd library (for image output), plus some
>>> extremely dated code to create postscript output. All text was
>>> drawn in Hershey fonts. Cairo improves on this mish-mash in so many
>>> ways; the graphics are looking absolutely fantastic, the toy font
>>> API is adequate for our needs, and I know my users are going to be
>>> very excited when they see these improvements.
>>>
>>> For GrADS distribution, I provide binary executables for a small
>>> set of platforms, but many users must build from source. GrADS
>>> requires a long list of supplemental libraries to fully enable all
>>> its features: the current count is 20. With the exception of X11
>>> and a few other system libs, we link statically with all these
>>> supplibs, so that our binaries are portable (some of the supplibs
>>> GrADS needs are rather obscure.) I get the impression from browsing
>>> through the forum archives that linking statically with Cairo isn't
>>> really the right way to do it, so during my development and testing
>>> I have been linking dynamically with a macports build of Cairo.
>>> It's been fine that way, a little slower than the old way of using
>>> direct X11 calls, but not deal-breakingly slow.
>>>
>>> Looking forward to the time when I must put out a release, I am
>>> trying to integrate Cairo into the GrADS autoconfiguration scripts
>>> and the setup we have for building all the supplibs from source. I
>>> can't assume that all my users will have macports or yum to do the
>>> dirty work for them, so I provide a set of instructions to build
>>> the libraries from source and link them with GrADS. It is something
>>> like the end-to-end build instructions on the Cairo website. I try
>>> to keep it as simple as possible, and tailor these instructions for
>>> the specific needs of GrADS.
>>>
>>> Testing out my home-grown Cairo recipe, it built without any
>>> problems (specifics given below). Then I linked GrADS two ways, one
>>> with the macports build (gfast), the other with my home-grown build
>>> (gslow). More specifics on how I linked the executables and output
>>> from otool are given below. The performance difference between
>>> glsow v. gfast is astonishing. Where gfast took 1-2 seconds to draw
>>> a plot, gslow took ~100 seconds to do the same thing. I reran all
>>> these steps on our 64-bit linux server running CentOS 5.4 and got
>>> similar results.
>>>
>>> Thanks to earlier answers I got regarding getting cairo-trace to
>>> work, I created a huge trace file, but I'm not sure how to
>>> interpret it. It contained ~77,000 fills and ~10,000 strokes. I
>>> reran cairo-trace with the --profile option and posted it at
ftp://iges.org/pub/jma/gs.89039.lzma
>>> . The output from running cairo-perf-trace on my trace file is
>>> given below. I have no idea whether the trace info is helpful.
>>>
>>> What I could use is some advice about linking statically v.
>>> dynamically for my binary distributions, and some guidance for how
>>> to build Cairo from source (with only as-needed features) and
>>> link it with my application so that I get the same performance as
>>> the carefully packaged, fully-enabled versions of Cairo.
>>>
>>> Thank you!!
>>> --Jennifer
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jennifer M. Adams
>>> IGES/COLA
>>> 4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
>>> Calverton, MD 20705
>>> jm...@co...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> OS X version 10.5.8
>>>
>>>> uname -a
>>> Darwin Atlantic-2.local 9.8.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.8.0: Wed Jul
>>> 15 16:55:01 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1228.15.4~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
>>>
>>>> gcc --version
>>> i686-apple-darwin9-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5490)
>>>
>>>
>>> Configuration options used to build cairo from source:
>>> pkg-config-0.23
>>> (I then set the environment vars PKG_CONFIG and PKG_CONFIG_PATH to
>>> the appropriate places)
>>> pixman-0.21.2
>>> freetype-2.4.3 --without-fsspec --without-fsref --without-ats --
>>> without-quickdraw-toolbox --without-quickdraw-carbon
>>> fontconfig-2.8.0 --enable-libxml2 --with-freetype-config=...
>>> cairo-1.10.2 --disable-dependency-tracking \
>>> --enable-xlib=yes \
>>> --enable-xml=yes \
>>> --enable-fc=yes \
>>> --enable-ft=yes \
>>> --enable-xlib-xrender=no \
>>> --enable-xcb=no \
>>> --enable-qt=no \
>>> --enable-quartz=no \
>>> --enable-win32=no \
>>> --enable-skia=no \
>>> --enable-os2=no \
>>> --enable-beos=no \
>>> --enable-drm=no \
>>> --enable-pthread \
>>> --enable-gl=no
>>>
>>>
>>> Linking commands used to build gfast and gslow (relevant bits
>>> highlighed in red):
>>>
>>> gcc -g -O2 -lSystemStubs -o gslow grads.o gxsubs.o gxmeta.o
>>> gxchpl.o gxcntr.o gxstrm.o gxwmap.o gxshad.o gxshad2.o gaexpr.o
>>> gafunc.o gautil.o gagx.o gscrpt.o gamach.o bufrstn.o gabufr.o
>>> gabufrtbl.o gxX.o gxdxwd.o galloc.o gaddes.o gaio.o gacfg.o
>>> gauser.o gasdf.o gatxt.o -L/Users/jma/supplibs/lib -lcairo -L/usr/
>>> X11R6/lib -lX11 /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libreadline.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libncurses.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libgd.a /Users/
>>> jma/supplibs/lib/libpng12.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/
>>> jma/supplibs/lib/libjpeg.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libgrib2c.a /
>>> Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libjasper.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/
>>> libpng12.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/
>>> libmfhdf.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libdf.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/
>>> libudunits.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libsz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/
>>> lib/libjpeg.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/
>>> lib/libhdf5.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libsz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/
>>> lib/libjpeg.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/
>>> lib/libudunits.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libnetcdf.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libhdf5_hl.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libhdf5.a /Users/
>>> jma/supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libsz.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libcurl.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libtiff.a /Users/
>>> jma/supplibs/lib/libgeotiff.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libshp.a -lm
>>>
>>> gcc -g -O2 -lSystemStubs -o gfast grads.o gxsubs.o gxmeta.o
>>> gxchpl.o gxcntr.o gxstrm.o gxwmap.o gxshad.o gxshad2.o gaexpr.o
>>> gafunc.o gautil.o gagx.o gscrpt.o gamach.o bufrstn.o gabufr.o
>>> gabufrtbl.o gxX.o gxdxwd.o galloc.o gaddes.o gaio.o gacfg.o
>>> gauser.o gasdf.o gatxt.o -L/opt/local/lib -lcairo -lX11 /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libreadline.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libncurses.a /
>>> Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libgd.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libpng12.a /
>>> Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libjpeg.a /
>>> Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libgrib2c.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/
>>> libjasper.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libpng12.a /Users/jma/supplibs/
>>> lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libmfhdf.a /Users/jma/supplibs/
>>> lib/libdf.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libudunits.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libsz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libjpeg.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libhdf5.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libsz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libjpeg.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libudunits.a /Users/jma/
>>> supplibs/lib/libnetcdf.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libhdf5_hl.a /
>>> Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libhdf5.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libz.a /
>>> Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libsz.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libcurl.a /
>>> Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libtiff.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/
>>> libgeotiff.a /Users/jma/supplibs/lib/libshp.a -lm
>>>
>>>
>>>> otool -L gslow
>>> gslow:
>>> /Users/jma/supplibs/src/cairo/lib/libcairo.2.dylib
>>> (compatibility version 11003.0.0, current version 11003.2.0)
>>> /usr/X11/lib/libX11.6.dylib (compatibility version 9.0.0,
>>> current version 9.0.0)
>>> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0,
>>> current version 111.1.5)
>>> /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0,
>>> current version 1.0.0)
>>>> otool -L gfast
>>> gfast:
>>> /opt/local/lib/libcairo.2.dylib (compatibility version
>>> 11003.0.0, current version 11003.0.0)
>>> /opt/local/lib/libX11.6.dylib (compatibility version
>>> 10.0.0, current version 10.0.0)
>>> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0,
>>> current version 111.1.5)
>>> /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0,
>>> current version 1.0.0)
>>>
>>>
>>>> cairo-perf-trace gg.88743.trace
>>> [ # ] backend test min(s) median(s)
>>> stddev. count
>>> [ # ] image: pixman 0.21.2
>>> [ 0] image gg 0.691 0.696
>>> 0.30% 6/6
>>> [ # ] image16: pixman 0.21.2
>>> [ 0] image16 gg 0.692 0.696
>>> 0.21% 6/6
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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