Long doc compile time or delay in relation to processor speed

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’m working with a long document, and my compile takes 1:20s. I’m sure we could discuss what components in the computer are responsible for compiling speed. What I found out is that adding memory will improve some. But most of all, jumping from an i5 to an i7 Intel processor will make the most significant difference in productivity. Using an i7 took less than 15 seconds to handle everything. My conclusion is that compiling speed depends almost exclusively on processor speed, then memory, then a change from HD to SSD

2

This probably depends highly on what format you compile to; for example Word compiles uses Java IIRC. But I would have thought that the disk would have been as big a bottleneck as the CPU… I also assume that compile has not been “multi-threaded” so probably occupies one core at most? I’ve never really checked — did you see if processing maxed out only one core?

3

I export to LaTeX in plain text. I don’t know how to check how many cores are active during compiling. Is it in Activity Monitor? I see only CPU % and number of threads there.

5

Yes Activity monitor, 100% means 1 core, so if you see 200% CPU it means 2 cores are fully utilised…

6

Thanks for your help. Compiling does not take more than 99%, or 1 core. Is it possible to ascribe more power to SC? The real question is this:

IS SCRIVENER:
MULTI-CORE AWARE? OR
MULTI-THREADED?

WHICH REALLY MEANS, DOES SCRIVENER MAKE USE OF ALL CPUs WHEN COMPILING?

My computer says negative.

7

Multi-threading is hard to do, and not all programs can easily make use of multiple threads. I can naively imagine that some compile operations could be parallelised (as each document in the draft could be parsed independently of the other), but I’ve had to try to parallelize code before and it was a lot more challenging than it seemed. Compile is faster for me in Scrivener 3 than Scrivener 2, but that isn’t due to multi-threading — I compiled a 65,000 word project with 47 figures and lots of cross-referencing, and regex replacements and it took ~4 seconds with 99% CPU use.

8

Problem solved in version 3. What a different in compile speed, wow.

9

Indeed!!! :smiley: 8)

10

Scrivener 3 uses Apple’s 64-bit libraries. Even if the code were otherwise the same, I’d expect a big boost because of the work Apple has put into making full use of 64-bit hardware.

Katherine

11

I’m sure that Keith has some part to play in this too… :stuck_out_tongue: