Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!visix!news From: amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Extended OS Part II Message-ID: Date: 4 Oct 90 19:44:25 GMT References: <5122@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca> <1990Oct3.061950.29203@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1990Oct3.084923.22547@visix.com> <288@heaven.woodside.ca.us> Sender: news@visix.com Reply-To: amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) Organization: Visix Software Inc., Reston, Virginia Lines: 23 In article <288@heaven.woodside.ca.us>, glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes: > Hmmmm. If 'compress' is I/O bound, how come it takes so much longer > than 'cp'? Well, as several people have also pointed out in email, I seem to have been smoking my socks :-). Now, it is true that LZW compression is asymmetric in time--it takes less time to decompress than compress. I may have been thinking of some experiments I did a while back with *de*compression speeds. Even so, though, measurement seems to show that it's still pretty CPU-bound. Well, nobody's perfect. I'm still not convinced the DSP would be faster, but I promise not to make any pronouncement about it until I've actually tried it this time :-). -- Amanda Walker amanda@visix.com Visix Software Inc. ...!uunet!visix!amanda -- "In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service." --John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" (1859)