Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!bpa!cbmvax!jesup From: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Benchmarking interactive software (Re: It looks like he's at it again!) Message-ID: <13533@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 31 Jul 90 03:30:47 GMT References: <1990Jul12.012730.4248@Stardent.COM> <64044@sgi.sgi.com> <13392@cbmvax.commodore.com> <_YV4Y9A@ggpc2.ferranti.com> <784@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax (Randell Jesup) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 27 In article peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >At the speed computers run, the user-interface part of the code for WP >could probably be written mostly in Dartmouth Basic (that parsed expressions >by repeatedly scanning forwards and backwards for parentheses) and *still* >be fast enough that nobody would notice it. Sure, screen updates and >buffer handling should probably have a large assembly content on a machine >like an 8088, but I suspect that much of the delay would turn out to be >in block moves (and BitBlt on a bitmapped display)... which are likely to be >in assembly in any case. Don't forget the other reason to write in assembler, something that many Unix programmers seem to have forgotten (amusing, since it was once one of the advantages of Unix): space efficiency. Memory is _not_ unlimited, nor is it free (not even with VM). Witness that a Unix Workstation using the most recent Unix (SVR4), with X and OpenLook _requires_ 8 meg to use. Without OpenLook you can _almost_ use it in 4 meg, but it can be a bitch. (I'm referring to a specific implementation, others may take more or less.) And then of course any sizable application may want more... In the WP case, they wanted a BIG package to be usable in 512K or a 1 meg machine with floppies (i.e. loading code off disk is slow). (This is the AmigaDos version I'm referring to.) -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"