[rescue] Sun 3/60

[Dave McGuire]

On August 16, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> >   I'm sure you wouldn't have.  However, and I'm at a loss to explain
> > the difference, X11R4 and R5 perform easily three times better when
> > compiled with gcc as compared to Sun bundled cc under SunOS4 on M68K
> > hardware.
> 
> Did you get your comparison from x11perf results, or the general
> feel of things with interactive use?

  General interactive performance.  Never got around to collecting
actual numbers; the "feel" of X was so much better that we didn't
bother.

> I couldn't reproduce anything near such factors of difference with any
> other non-graphics application I ever tested GCC-vs-CC on, and I did
> some pretty serious benchmarking at one time....

  Just to be sure, we're talking about the stock cc that comes with
SunOS4, not the extra-cost SunPro compiler, right?

> >  Even the X release notes strongly advise its use for
> > exactly that reason.  The same is true for VAX processors, by the way.
> 
> No, none of the X11 release notes I can find from MIT or the X
> Consortium have ever recommended building with GCC on *any* platform for
> performance reasons.

Quote from X11R4 release notes:

7.   If you are running on a VAX  or  680x0  processor,  you
     should consider using the GNU C compiler (available via
     anonymous ftp from the machine prep.ai.mit.edu) to com-
     pile  the server.  It can result in up to a factor of 2
     improvement in performance.  See the  HasGcc  parameter
     in  the files sun.cf, ultrix.cf, macII.cf, and site.def
     in mit/config/.

> Someday this winter, when I need an extra heater in the basement, I'll
> fire up one of my sun3's and get the latest NetBSD running on it.  Then
> I can pull a copy of SunOS-4's compiler from tape and try compiling some
> sample code with both it and with NetBSD's GCC-based (probably 3.0 by
> then) compiler and see how they compare.  I guess if I were a real nut
> for punishment I'd get GCC-1.42 off the shelf and compare it too.  I
> suspect it was better in some ways than 2.x.x for i386 and m68k, at
> least up until the most recent values of .x.x.

  If you actually want to do this, let me know...I'm interested in
your results, and I might do it here as well for kicks.  I miss
hacking on Sun3 systems.

       -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
Laurel, MD