A key step in maximizing Mechanical APDL performance on any hardware system is to properly interpret the program output. This chapter describes how to use information in the output file to study and understand the performance of a given simulation. The performance measurements can be used to assess CPU, I/O, memory use, and performance for various hardware configurations. Armed with this knowledge, you can use the options previously discussed to improve performance the next time you run your current analysis or a similar one. Additionally, this data will help identify hardware bottlenecks that you can remedy.