Compare Performance of Two Programs

jclast

So I'm taking an algorithms class, and part of this week's assignment is to compare the performance of 2 algorithms. I already implemented both of them (Kruskal's and Prim's algorithm for generating a minimum spanning tree), but I have no idea how to convince the cmd prompt to tell me how many processor cycles each program takes when against my sample input.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Jasconius

I think if you've got Vista there are some advanced system resources tools that you might be able to look at. I know there's super detailed stuff about memory and hard disk access on a process-by-process basis.

jclast

I'm on XP. When I programmed on Unix in college there was something I could throw at the front of the program from the command line that would tell me how many cycles it took. I'm not sure what else the prof would want me to do here.

Echo

Which OS? Unix typically has "time" - though it's probably not exact enough for you if you want exact number of cycles.

time uptime
 4:54  up 7 days,  7:18, 2 users, load averages: 0,36 0,40 0,35

real    0m0.005s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.004s

jclast

Echo wrote: »

Which OS? Unix typically has "time" - though it's probably not exact enough for you if you want exact number of cycles.

time uptime
 4:54  up 7 days,  7:18, 2 users, load averages: 0,36 0,40 0,35

real    0m0.005s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.004s

That's what I used in college. Is there a comparable function in WinXP (SP3 in case it matters)?

Echo

Might be included in Cygwin.

jclast

Never mind. I just threw some basic timing in the program itself. Apparently C# will measure in "ticks" (whatever those are), and I can just compare those together. Should be close enough to see which algorithm is more efficient at any rate.

Feel free to lock this up, and thanks for help.