Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!upba!dsndata!wayne From: wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: 386 machines are workstations? (Sun/386i) Message-ID: Date: 14 Jun 90 13:20:17 GMT References: <136288@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <6537@vax1.acs.udel.EDU> <11876@cbmvax.commodore.com> <2264@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Sender: wayne@dsndata.UUCP Organization: Design Data Lines: 23 > God, 60% of a 17 VUPS machine? I knew Unix window systems were mostly > horrible hogs, but that's ridiculous. things like windowing systems will tend to use up all available cpu cycles no matter how fast your computer is. when you move your mouse, you need to erase the old cursor, draw a new one, check to see if it has crossed a window boundary and such. the more cpu cycles you have the more often you can perform these things and the smoother your window system will appear. you can make a window system on a 10Mhz 68000 respond quick enough that no one really cares that it is skipping a lot of pixels when you are moving the puck quickly. there _is_ a limit to how much cpu a window system will use, but it takes a lot of horse power to redraw the cursor on _every_ pixel as you move the puck very quickly across the screen. sure, you could add code to limit how often you redraw the cursor, but what's the point? -wayne