EFS Questions from z11

[z11]

...would you shed some lights on the following:
I am planning to get a new PC with dual Xeon 2.8 processors and 4 gig RAM...
1) how many real time charts can I expect to load without degradation in performance? in multiple instances of eSignal if that helps?
2) can the DDEOutput be referenced in an Excel on a different PC?
3) if not, would file I/O be the alternative to communicate with EFS on one PC and some other application on another?
4) any idea on limitations of memory (stack) sizes of all running EFS's global (and local) variables?

Thanks.

[Doji3333]

My ideas....

First, Great system config. It should really fly. But remember, the "weakest link" will be your problem. So, if you are not on broadband - that will probably be the limiter.


1) how many real time charts can I expect to load without degradation in performance? in multiple instances of eSignal if that helps?

Unknown - but probably more than 40+

2) can the DDEOutput be referenced in an Excel on a different PC?

This I believe is not possible (without doing it as shown below).

3) if not, would file I/O be the alternative to communicate with EFS on one PC and some other application on another?

Yes, Write a file to one machine, then create a "mapped network drive" to that directory from the other computer. This way, your second computer will be able to pull data from drive "?" and that data will be updated from the first machine.

4) any idea on limitations of memory (stack) sizes of all running EFS's global (and local) variables?

Unknown - maybe JasonK can help??

B

[eSignal_JasonK]

4. There are adjustable parameters for Heap and Stack size. Go to Tools->EFS->Settings. If you run into some problems here and you thinks it's directly related to these limits, you can increase them here.

[gspiker]

Z11,

3) if not, would file I/O be the alternative to communicate with EFS on one PC and some other application on another?

Watch out for what the file systems (local and remote) cache will do to you here.

Use flush in your EFS to make sure the data is written to disk.
I'm not sure what you can do on the remote side to make sure it looks for fresh data all the time instead of relying on its cache for reads (it will sych up eventually on its own, but you could pull stale cached data for a while until it does).

Garth

[FibbGann]

I have one of my pc's with the dual xeons,1 gig ram, 6 monitors.

Going with 4 gig ram is just flat out overkill, you will never use it and IMHO its a waste of money.

1 gig ram will due you more than enough.

Fibbgann

[Guest]

Z11,

There has been much discussion over the years with regards to performance. One of the most significant and applicable areas to you I believe (in addition to those reply's you have already received on this thread) is that eSignal is a single threaded application and you are considering dual Xeon Processors.

I would recommend that you use the search tool and look up the word "threaded". When I did, I found several discussions that you may find interesting. There are several board members out there who test new board designs and new processors and there is some insight to be gained reading those threads.

[z11]

Thanks for all the insights guys. After did some search based on Steve's recoommendation, it appears that the following might be fair understanding on my part:
1) 1 gig of ram is probably enough, at most 2 gig.
2) albeit eSig is single threaded, dual processors would improve overall performance especially I have an Excel running VBA codes talking to a trading platform for order management and DDEOutput communication with EFS.

Any thoughts on my point #2? Thanks.

[z11]

FibbGann - how many Adv. Charts (assuming each running at least 1 EFS) do you have going on the configuration you mentioned? during trading hours? Thanks.

[Guest]

Hi Z11,

Yes, my observations have indicated the dual hyperthreading would provide some significant performance improvement for the additional applications. I have not used the DDEOutput communication with EFS within my other applications, so I am unsure what affect, if any, it would have. Maybe someone else has some experience with that aspect.

[Doji3333]

Simple advice...

Get the most computing power you can afford.

I'm running on a machine that is about 2 years old and is configured as follows...

2.4 Ghz P4
1GB Ram
80 GB HDD
XP Pro

I run about 15+ charts a day, 2 quote windows, Dynaorder and many other applications all at the same time. I run about 3~8 efs files per file (depending on the day), so I'm probably running 80+ efs files at one time. I run real-time trading systems every day with this configuration and don't seem to have many problems.

I'm also on cable modem (near T1 speed).

My advice is get the best you can afford and be sure not to skimp on the broadband.

B

[FibbGann]

Originally posted by z11
FibbGann - how many Adv. Charts (assuming each running at least 1 EFS) do you have going on the configuration you mentioned? during trading hours? Thanks.

Yes, during trading hours, EFS's anywhere from 20 to 70, charts up to about 50.

As long as the EFS"s aren't hogs (usually due to coding) you should be fine.

I have never had any issues on the CPU side.

Fibbgann

[z11]

Now it is well understood that eSignal is a single threaded app...but what happens when additional instances of eSignal are invoked - are they all belong to the same thread? or are they of their own threads? and have their own address spaces? If they belong to the same thread then they share the same address space and therefore global variables can be accessed across multiple instances of eSig...but they can't...or can they? Am I doing something incorrectly? can/would anyone confirm this?

[Guest]

Hi Z11,

I just tested, I was unable to grab global variables from another instance of eSignal.

I had no problem grabbing the same variables from the instance of the efs where they were set. In both cases, the same efs was used to grab the globals.

[gspiker]

Now it is well understood that eSignal is a single threaded app...but what happens when additional instances of eSignal are invoked - are they all belong to the same thread? or are they of their own threads? and have their own address spaces? If they belong to the same thread then they share the same address space and therefore global variables can be accessed across multiple instances of eSig...but they can't...or can they? Am I doing something incorrectly? can/would anyone confirm this?

Each instance is its own heavy weight thread, with its own address space and stack.

G

[z11]

I suppose this line of finding supports the benefit of having a dual processor.