Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!sehyo
From: sehyo@netcom.com (Sehyo Chang)
Subject: Re: VW 2.0 slow on non-DX machines
Message-ID: <sehyoCzAE96.Iwo@netcom.com>
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Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 02:15:05 GMT
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Bob Kass (kass@garnet.msen.com) wrote:

: Quick summary: 
: VW 2.0 is much slower than VW 1.0 in handling floating point operations
: and screen updates on Intel processors without a floating point processor.


: Full story:
: Since I started to use VisualWorks 2.0 on my laptop I've been dismayed
: by the seeming sluggish performance of the system.  In particular,
: window refreshes and general window updating seems very slow. For
: example, when editing a Business Graphics widget property in a canvas
: (a worst case) it takes 10 seconds for the window to update after a
: property change is applied.  In general, redraws of the VisualWorks
: launcher window or the canvas tool window can take several seconds.

: I finally took some time to measure what was happening.  I compared
: the performance of VW 1.0 and VW 2.0 on two Intel, MS-Windows based
: machines, a 486SX 33mhz laptop and a 486DX2/66mhz desktop machine,
: using the Advanced toolkit benchmarking tools.

: System configurations:
: Laptop: Dell Latitude 433c -- Intel 486SX/33 processor, 20 MB RAM
: Desktop: Dell Optiplex 466/MX -- Intel 486DX2/66 processor, 24MB RAM, 
: 				local bus video


VW 2.0 is definitely slower at least in GUI refresh time. VW 1.0 is much
snazzier.  But this is nothing new.  Each generation of Smalltalk VM
is slower than previous one.  That's why you have to buy 2x faster machine
to compensate for each release.  The 1994 Smalltalk VM's seems same speed
as old 4404.  Sigh...
