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From: des@jplpro.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc
Subject: Big Programs Hurt Performance
Message-ID: <417@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: Fri, 18-Sep-87 13:10:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: devvax.417
Posted: Fri Sep 18 13:10:55 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 03:18:08 EDT
References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM) <8579@utzoo.UUCP) <6886@eddie.MIT.EDU) <2473@xanth.UUCP) <6920@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Sender: news@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV
Reply-To: des@jplpro.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Smyth)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena CA.
Lines: 52
Keywords: cost of bloated programs
Xref: mnetor comp.arch:2232 comp.unix.wizards:4317 comp.os.misc:189

In article <6920@eddie.MIT.EDU> jbs@eddie.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal) writes:
>In article <2473@xanth.UUCP) kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>)In article <6886@eddie.MIT.EDU) jbs@eddie.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal) writes:
>))In article <8579@utzoo.UUCP) henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>)))[...]graphing the size of the ls(1) command versus
>)))time is an interesting exercise[...]
>))
>))However, a more meaningful exercise would be to graph the cost of the
>))memory used by ls(1) versus time.  [...]
>)
>)[...]
>)We are rapidly headed toward being I/O bound simply due to program load
>)costs.
>)
>)For an example close to home, my Amiga is doing good if it can drag
>)programs off a hard disk at 30K bytes/second over an SCSI interface.
>)[...]
>
> ... (Most Sun's use Eagles, with rates of 1.8MB/sec >or higher).  

But on these demand paged Suns, we see such stupidity as:
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root       122880 Sep 15  1986 /bin/csh*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 david      737280 Aug 14 16:34 bin/shelltool*

where most of the huge increase in size of shelltool is in the window
management stuff.  Isn't this stuff shared across all sorts of things
in SunWindows?  If so, why is EVERY "tool" so VERY slow loading?

FOr example, try starting mailtool as an icon.  It should just load
what it needs, but no... even though it it is:
bin/shelltool:  mc68020 demand paged executable
it takes several seconds to load ... That seems an effective load rate
of about 250Kb (over that wonderful scuzzy disk, like most workstations
are sold with).

---------- CONCLUSION

Those extra features of big programs (like especially window managers and
I suppose any other system libraries) should be shared and therefore be
LOW COST.
	* Why should all the tools be huge, when they are really using
	  the same code?

There still needs to be protection, so re-useable features don't have
to be re-entrant (separate data spaces).

These re-useable "objects" seem to need to be "light weight processes"
(basing this on the fact that the Xerox Viewpoint/XDE/Star systems
are FAR more responsive than the Sun, even though the Sun 3 has about
twice the processing power than the Xerox CPU).

Perhaps these things need HW, perhaps SW, more likely OS support.