[Paraview] [EXTERNAL] horrible slow performance -- I must be doing something very wrong

[Scott, W Alan]

Rich,
You are probably doing something wrong.  :-)  I assume you are using PV 4.0.1.

After setting up the local client/ remote server, using more than one server, try the following:

·         Help/ About.  Click on Connection Information.  You should see the correct number of Processes (i.e., pvservers).  Now you know you are running in parallel with MPI.

·         Edit/ Settings/ Server.  Change Remote Render Threshold to 0.  You are now rendering remotely on the cluster.   Make the ParaView window quite small.  Tools/ Timer log.  Clear.  Close.  Sources/ Sphere.  Apply.  Spin it.   Tools/ Timer log.  Is it fast enough?  On redsky, going through a disgusting number of layers from my ParaView client to my desktop (think X forwarding), I am getting 15 to 30 frames/second.  Clear the timer log.

·         Make ParaView full screen.  Spin, spin.  Timer log.  I get about 10 frames/second interactive, 2 frames /second still.  (This represents time with my finger on the mouse, time with finger off the mouse).  This tells you how fast your network is pushing 2d images from the server to the client.  (As I said, for me, it is a SSLLOOWW pipe between me and my client.)

·         Make ParaView small screened once again.  Change the sphere’s Theta resolution to 1000 and Phi Resolution to 1000.  You now have around 2 million cells.  Spin, spin.  Timer log.  This represents the speed of the cluster, since we are having to render all of those triangles (cells) (actually vertexes) in the Mesa3d software renderer.

·         Clear the timer log.  Delete the Sphere.  View/ Memory Inspector.  (This lets you know if you are overflowing memory.  Further, you should have as many pvservers as you think you have.  If you see one, you have an MPI issue.)  Sources/ Wavelet.

By the way, if I were running the client locally (which I often do), I will get frame rates over 60/second connecting to the clusters.  Connecting to clusters across state lines will slow things down to 4 to 10 FPS or less.

Huge, hero size data will also slow things down a lot.

Another thing to try is use the Process Id Scalars filter.  That will show you how your data is being spread around.  It is very possible that your data is being read through a serial reader, and only going into one process (server).

Don’t turn volume rendering on or opacity on (at first, anyway).

If that doesn’t help, I will be in tomorrow (and tonight for another hour) – if we need to chat.


Alan



From: paraview-bounces at paraview.org [mailto:paraview-bounces at paraview.org] On Behalf Of Cook, Rich
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 6:16 PM
To: paraview at paraview.org
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [Paraview] horrible slow performance -- I must be doing something very wrong

Hello
I am running paraview in client-server mode.  I start the client on my desktop, run pvserver in parallel with four instances and connect my client to the "ringleader" pvserver through an ssh tunnel.  The data is a 512x512x512 rectilinear grid in Miranda format.
I open my data and attempt to render a simple picture of my data and it is so slow I'm going to kill myself.  Maybe one frame every 5 or 10 seconds.  I'm imagining that the geometry is being shipped to my client, and the client is doing the rendering, but I don't know that.
Am I doing some basic thing wrong?  How can I get reasonable performance?
Thanks

--
✐Richard Cook
✇ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Bldg-453 Rm-4024, Mail Stop L-557
7000 East Avenue,  Livermore, CA, 94550, USA
☎ (office) (925) 423-9605
☎ (fax) (925) 423-6961
---
Information Management & Graphics Grp., Services & Development Div., Integrated Computing & Communications Dept.
(opinions expressed herein are mine and not those of LLNL)




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