Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!stcns3!stca77!peter
From: peter@stca77.stc.oz (Peter Jeremy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Lattice 5.0 is out
Keywords: Source Level Debugger, better assember, Make included
Message-ID: <350@stca77.stc.oz>
Date: 21 Nov 88 03:57:12 GMT
References: <77037@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: peter@stca77.stc.oz (Peter Jeremy)
Organization: Alcatel-STC, Alexandria, AUSTRALIA
Lines: 41

In article <77037@sun.uucp> cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes:
>Another step taken forward in the Compiler Wars, Lattice 5.0 was released
>Tuesday November 8th.

Well, I received my update notice (with a glossy for C++) last Friday.
That's not bad time to get from the US (they airlift them using a private
company which probably helps).  Before I plonk down my hard-earned money
I would like to know a bit more about it.

>New 5.0 features from their list :
 [ description of features removed ]
The most obviously missing thing is an indication of hardware and software
prerequisites.  Can it run on a 1meg, 2 FD system, or does it need HD and/or
more ram? (Yes, I know thats not a good development environment, but money is
a bit tight at present).  Will it run under 1.2 and/or 1.3?

Another thing I would like to know, is what improvements they actually
did to the compiler, and what changes they will make to your code.  Also
they didn't say how ANSIfied the new compiler is.

When version 4 came out, the writeup was full of figures showing how much
faster it was than 3.10 (and Manx).  This seems missing (apart from a
nicely vague "up to 30% faster").

Would someone (John Toebes maybe) like to post the list of enhancements
and bug-fixes over 4.01, as well as some figures on how well it works.

>	  A good test for global optimization
>	  is the drystone program because a good global optimizer will 
>	  realize it doesn't "do" anything and optimized everything but
>	  the printfs out of it :-).
As an aside, this is only true of Dhrystone 1.x.  The latest 2.1 which
was posted in comp.arch a few months ago prevents this by splitting the
benchmark into two files.  It also uses the results of the variables it
plays with (by printing them out at the end) to prevent this sort of
tomfoolery.
-- 
Peter Jeremy (VK2PJ)         peter@stca77.stc.oz
Alcatel-STC Australia        ...!uunet!stca77.stc.oz!peter
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