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From: jww@bonnie.UUCP (Joel West)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac,net.lang.mod2,net.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: SofTech/Volition Modula-2 for Mac?
Message-ID: <477@bonnie.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-May-85 11:52:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: bonnie.477
Posted: Tue May  7 11:52:31 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 8-May-85 03:33:42 EDT
References: <473@bonnie.UUCP>
Organization: CACI -- La Jolla, Calif.
Lines: 59
Xref: watmath net.micro.mac:1305 net.lang.mod2:208 net.lang.pascal:289

I have an update to my earlier posting, from fa.info-mac digest #42

>     ...[the p-System software]got a reputation from program developers as
>     being particularly slow in execution, especially on the Apple, which,
>     some said, "ran slow as molasses."  [Goodwin] agrees: "We lost contact
>     with the customer and input of what they wanted in a product."
>        But that's all changing, he said: "We're speeding up performance
>     on the Apple II family by a magnitude of 20 to 30 times."
		...
> -----------------personal comment--------------------
> Second, the UCSD Pascal for the Mac ("MacAdvantage") benchmarked
> in my test between 30-100 as slow as a compiled C.  This suggests
> that the new UCSD Pascal would be not a p-system at all, but a
> fully compiled language.
> -- 
> 	Joel West				     (619) 457-9681

Date: 3 May 1985 18:11:29-EDT
From: jcr@Mitre-Bedford
Subject: Improvements to UCSD Pascal....

After reading the above, I called Softech to check it out.  Having
used Apple Pascal on the IIe for about a year now, I was pretty
excited at the capabilities described in this article.

The performance increase described in the article comes through the
use of a native code generator (NCG).  For those not familiar with the
p-system, an NCG is a program that takes the p-code produced by a
p-system compiler and translates in into native code for the processor
it is to run on.  The translation is not complete; some portions of
p-code are left intact and still must be interpreted.  However, the
increase in execution speed is still quite significant.

Alas, when I mentioned that I'd heard that an NCG (or some other 
improvement) might soon be available for the Apple II family, the man
at Softech knew immediately what my source was.  He said that the
reporter owned a IIe and got a little overzealous in his reporting.  
The fact is that they currently have no plans for an improvement to 
pascal for the Apple II family, though he said they WERE keeping an 
ear open, and if demand was high enough, such a product MIGHT possibly
be released in the future.

However, NCGs are available (or soon will be) for several other
processors.  It would be interesting to compare the performance of Mac
UCSD pascal using an NCG to Mac Object Pascal when both become
available.  Also, does anyone perhaps have statistics on UCSD pascal
with an NCG on the IBM PC as compared to Turbo Pascal?


                                  Regards,
                                             --- Jeff Rogers
                                                 jcr@Mitre-Bedford.ARPA
-- 
	Joel West				     (619) 457-9681
	CACI, Inc. - Federal 3344 N. Torrey Pines Ct La Jolla 92037
	jww@bonnie.UUCP (ihnp4!bonnie!jww)
	westjw@nosc.ARPA

   "The best is the enemy of the good" - A. Mullarney