home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
Wrap
Received: from sloth.swcp.com (sloth.swcp.com [198.59.115.25]) by nacm.com (8.6.10/8.6.9) with ESMTP id MAA10236 for <executor@nacm.com>; Sat, 4 Nov 1995 12:25:17 -0800 Received: from iclone.UUCP (uucp@localhost) by sloth.swcp.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) with UUCP id NAA08460; Sat, 4 Nov 1995 13:25:09 -0700 Received: from gwar.ardi.com by mailhost with smtp (nextstep Smail3.1.29.0 #11) id m0tBp5A-000YcBC; Sat, 4 Nov 95 13:20 MST Received: by gwar.ardi.com (linux Smail3.1.28.1 #5) id m0tBp5A-000GOwC; Sat, 4 Nov 95 13:20 MST Message-Id: <m0tBp5A-000GOwC@gwar.ardi.com> Date: Sat, 4 Nov 95 13:20 MST From: mat@ardi.com (Mat Hostetter) To: brianw@scripps.edu (Brian Wimberly) Cc: executor@nacm.com Subject: Re: E/D vs E/L speed In-Reply-To: <9511041956.AA06273@dupond.Scripps.edu> References: <9511041956.AA06273@dupond.Scripps.edu> Sender: owner-paper@nacm.com Precedence: bulk >>>>> "Brian" == Brian Wimberly <brianw@scripps.edu> writes: Brian> Which is faster on the same hardware -- Ex. /DOS or Brian> Ex. /Linux? Our CPU emulator will run at the same speed under any OS, so there are only a few issues: 1) How fast can Executor access the graphics hardware? 2) How efficiently is virtual memory implemented? (Only relevant if you don't have lots of memory and therefore need to page to disk). 3) How well does the operating system do things like cache recently accessed hard drive contents in RAM? Linux/X-windows loses to DOS big in (1). If svgalib supports svga modes on your card, Executor/Linux/svgalib should be about the same speed as Executor/DOS. Linux beats DOS in (2), at least if you're using cwsdpmi.exe (the free DPMI provider we supply). OS/2 Warp and other DPMI providers seem to do a substantially better job of using virtual memory that cwsdpmi, so if you're using one of those you won't see much difference moving to Linux. For you CS types out there, cwsdpmi uses a round-robin paging algorithm, an algorithm which doesn't work all that well for paging. It's on the author's long list of things to improve. Linux does a good job of (3), although something like smartdrv under DOS is probably similar. In general, Executor/DOS tends to be faster because Executor has direct video access (under many system configurations), and there's not much speed difference in the other areas. Your mileage may vary. -Mat