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From: keller@saturn.ucsc.edu (Jeffrey M. Keller)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Speed costs (Re: MWC's Coherent - A Lemon...)
Summary: Yes, xclock is big, but it's not that big.
Message-ID: <4042@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 4 Jun 90 05:17:08 GMT
References: <3886@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <136369@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <27415@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
Lines: 26

In article <27415@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> pjg@acsu.Buffalo.EDU (Paul Graham) writes:
>lm@snafu.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy) writes:
>
>|keller@saturn.ucsc.edu (Jeffrey M. Keller) writes:
>|>Your xclock binary is 1.3Meg?  It's 48K in X11R4 under SunOs 4.0.3 (sparc).
>
>|Yeah?  Tell me about it.  That executable is dynamically linked.  Go take
>|a look at how much it uses when it is in memory.
>
>i wouldn't comment on this except that some folks might think "aha that darned
>x" (well they will anyway but so what).  i don't use xclock but i fired one up
>and darned if it didn't check in at 844K.
...

Well, i wasn't going to comment either, but... ;-)
As i pointed out to McVoy in email, the binary size seems to be inflated
by the dynamic linking: in X11R3 on a Sun-3 under SunOS 3.5 (no shared
libraries), the xclock binary is 376K.  Granted, that's still huge, but
it suggests to me that the 1.3M (and even the 844K) figure is misleading.
Since i approve of shared libraries, i would like to think that the effective
cost of the 1.3M (or whatever) dynamically linked xclock is <= that of the
376K statically linked one.
--
Jeff Keller           keller@saturn.ucsc.edu           (408)425-5416
THIS LIFE IS A TEST.  IT IS ONLY A TEST.   HAD THIS BEEN A REAL LIFE,
YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN INSTRUCTIONS ON WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO DO.