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From: meo@rsiatl.UUCP (Miles ONeal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Overhead of X-based GUI's
Keywords: toolkit motif
Message-ID: <4647@rsiatl.UUCP>
Date: 4 Nov 90 04:40:19 GMT
Followup-To: comp.windows.x.motif
Organization: Systems & Software Solutions, Inc.
Lines: 29

andrew@epps.kodak.com (Andrew Lukasik) writes:

>I'm looking for 'cost' infomation regarding motif and X-toolkits 
>in general.
>By 'Cost' I mean "what are memory and performance overheads for 
>using GUI's ?"

The following is for Xt-based toolkit{ such as Xaw, Motif, etc.

From fairly extensive experience, I would say about 1/4 to 2
MB, depending on the complexity of the application, the quality
of compiler you have, etc. (Of course the top end is wide open;
I'm talking typical). That's the client side. The server (which
may, of course, be the same system) will probably use something
in the same neighborhood.

I can't really quote performance stats - I can say that a 50000+
line app that was GUI-intensive pretty much hogged a 4 MIPS Sun 386i
with 12 MB.

On the other hand that particular app made it possible for a
temp to do in 3 days what had formerly taken highly trained
personnel 2-3 weeks to do. The cost of a 12MB Sun quickly
paled beside the productivity increase.

Miles O'Neal
{uunet | emory}!rsiatl!meo (home)
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