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From: rthomson@mesa.dsd.es.com (Rich Thomson)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Rendering performance
Message-ID: <1991May7.202422.29806@dsd.es.com>
Date: 7 May 91 20:24:22 GMT
References: <1991Apr29.162712.1905@canon.co.uk> <1991May3.190648.13574@ucunix.san.uc.edu> <1991May3.224900.12807@dsd.es.com> <1991May6.114747.12681@canon.co.uk> <1991May6.234927.17724@dsd.es.com> <1991May7.090203.18257@canon.co.uk>
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Reply-To: rthomson@dsd.es.com (Rich Thomson)
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I seem to have confused two different authors, the with the original
numbers that I was asking about and David Lau-Kee who posted a
followup article.  Sorry for confusing them and attributing things to
the wrong people.

I agree 100% with David when he says:

In article <1991May7.090203.18257@canon.co.uk>
	laukee@canon.co.uk writes:
>[...] My point is that these
>sorts of numbers are in some circumstances nearly meaningless.

This is exactly the impetus that drives the GPC.  I've just gotten a
copy of the GPC quarterly report at work and I'd say that this is
required reading for anybody trying to benchmark performance of real
machines.  I'd also say that its important to actually *see* the GPC
tests running as well as looking at the numbers.

Something I'd like to see in the GPC report is a tabular break-down of
the models describing number of segments/polyline, average polyline
segment length (in screen coordinates), etc.  The quarterly report
just has a paragraph per model that gives one a rough idea of the
contents (i.e. mostly polylines/polygons changes to the viewing
through the course of the benchmark, etc).  This is good, but I'd
still like a program that could tell me statistical information about
any BIF file.

							-- Rich
-- 
  ``Read my MIPS -- no new VAXes!!'' -- George Bush after sniffing freon
	    Disclaimer: I speak for myself, except as noted.
UUCP: ...!uunet!dsd.es.com!rthomson		Rich Thomson
ARPA: rthomson@dsd.es.com			PEXt Programmer