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Participating Frequently
February 27, 2023
Question

Benchmarking request for Acrobat Pro Optical Character Reader on Apple Silicon

  • February 27, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 3066 views

I was curious about the performance of the Optical Character Reader (OCR) in Adobe Acrobat Pro on Apple Silicon, so I created a quick benchmark and posted it on another site.  Two users reponded, one with an M1 Max and another with an M1 Ultra, and got times of 45 s and 36 s, respectively, meaning the Ultra was 45/36 => 25% faster.  However, AFAIK, the OCR is single-threaded, and doesn't use the GPU, so it's surprising there is a difference, since both devices have the same single-threaded CPU performance [Each repeated the benchmark three times and go the same time to within < 1 s.]

So I was wondering if anyone here who has an Apple Silicon Mac would be willing to repeat the benchmark and post your results here.  The benchmark instructions are below.

Please post:

Machine:
OS:
Acrobat Pro Version:
Runtime:


Here are their results:

Machine: Apple M1 Max 16" MacBook Pro
OS:
MacOS 13.2.1
Acrobat Pro Version: 2022.003.20314
Runtime: 45 s

Machine: Apple Mac Studio Ultra/64GB RAM/M1/20-core CPU, 48-core GPU
OS: MacOS 13.2.1
Acrobat Pro Version: 2022.003.20314
Runtime: 36 s

Here are the steps:

[It looks complicated because I've laboriously indicated every step, but it should take under a minute to click through everything.]

0) Ensure no other significant active tasks are running.

1) In Safari (or the browser of your choice), go to this .gov website, which shows a recent Apple patent application:
https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/20230050061

2) Export it as a PDF (Safari screenshot shown):
 

 

 

3) Open the PDF in the lastest version of Adobe Acrobat Pro:
 

 

4) Do CMD-F and then enter “unified” in the search box, and hit “Next” (there are no instances of this, so it will be forced to search the entire document):
 

 

5) You will see this prompt. Hit “Yes”

 

 

 

 

6) You will see this prompt. Have your stopwatch ready. Start the watch when you hit “OK”:

 

 

7) Once the above starts runing, you will see a black progress window at the lower right:

 

 

Immediately after it completes the conversion of the last page (p 56), it will search the document and this window will appear. Stop the watch when you see it:
 
 





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1 reply

theorist0Author
Participating Frequently
February 27, 2023

Sorry, there's an issue with the USPTO web address, so I've attached the PDF  of the patent application here.

theorist0Author
Participating Frequently
February 27, 2023

....And feel free to provide benchmarks with PC's as well, since those would be interesting for comparison.