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From: daveb@geac.UUCP (Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Assembly language
Message-ID: <1276@geac.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Aug-87 12:16:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: geac.1276
Posted: Fri Aug 28 12:16:42 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Aug-87 15:40:36 EDT
References: <1668@ho95e.ATT.COM> <3240002@nucsrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown)
Organization: The little blue rock next to that twinkly star.
Lines: 32
Summary: contraintuitive experience


  Once upon a time, there was an Ability(tm) and an Enable(tm) for the
IBM Poisonous Computer.  

  Ability was written in a HLL with a few
assembler modules.  Enable was, according to its publicists, written
in assembler.
  The second version of Ability used a VMM written by Andrew Forber.
Enable used an unspecified overlay-swapping scheme.  
  Ability's HLL compiler produced mildly unimpressive code. Disassemblys of 
Enable looked *utterly beautiful*.

  The first Ability ran slower than Enable.  As one would expect.
  The second Ability ran faster on large-sized machines and slower on
medium-sized machines. As you might _not_ expect.
  I know that better algorithms can speed up processing, but surely
VMMs are slower (even Andrew agreed that it might be slower when he
proposed it).  

		Wha hoppen?

 --dave (file i/o) collier-brown

ps: Ability (actually Ability Plus, the second version) is still in
production and being advertized.  Enable may still exist, but I
haven't seen it lately...

-- 
 David Collier-Brown.                 {mnetor|yetti|utgpu}!geac!daveb
 Geac Computers International Inc.,   |  Computer Science loses its
 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, |  memory (if not its mind)
 CANADA, L3R 1B3 (416) 475-0525 x3279 |  every 6 months.