Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!ucbvax!NIC.GAC.EDU!scott
From: scott@NIC.GAC.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Extended OS Part II
Message-ID: <9010031321.AA06962@mcs-server.gac.edu>
Date: 3 Oct 90 13:21:05 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 24

madler@piglet.caltech.edu (Mark Adler) writes:
   JPEG only approximately recovers the original and only works well on video
   images anyway.  However, I saw mentioned in one of the NeXT blurbs on the
   new machines that the 56001 is being used for sound and data compression.
   I could easily imagine the Unix compress command running several times
   faster on the DSP.

I'm sure they mean that with regards to sound, or data taken through the
DSP port.  Currently, there's not very good support for large-scale
communications with the DSP from the main processor (no DMA).  I hear
that the new version doesn't do it, either, but that's rumor (please!).
Without hi-speed large data transfer, many operations simply run faster
on the '030.  Considering the size of compress'ed files, this would be
one of them.

Of course, a nice '040 would cure many of those complaints (compress
speed), expect that much of compress' overhead is in file reading
and writing, so don't expect a 3x speedup :-)  I may be wrong (please!).

scott hess
scott@gac.edu
Independent NeXT Developer	(Stuart)
NeXT Campus Consultant		(Not much, really)
GAC Undergrad			(Horrid.  Simply Horrid.  I mean the work!)