newton@cit-vax.UUCP (08/18/87)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Thanks... Expires: References: Sender: Reply-To: newton@cit-vax.UUCP (Mike Newton) Followup-To: Distribution: world Organization: California Institute of Technology Keywords: Safeware, thanks, flames, mac C compilers Lots of small tidbits: Many thanks to those that responded with info on Servant. Seems .952 is already out. Also seems like I need to get more memory. I tried to send thanks by mail to everyone. So far only one got bounced back: dagl@tut.cc.rochester.edu . Another persone asked for Safeware's address. His mail also bounced, so: Safeware, The Insurance Agency 2929 N. High St. POBox 02211 Columbus OH 43202 800 848 3469 or 614 262 0559 Finally as the one that posted all the commments on Mac C compilers (they ARE bad!), and that inadvertently caused the FLAME WAR, i wish to reply to the long "imported flame" send by Paul Hilfinger... >> First I would expect an 80386 to run faster than a 68020 >> at the same clock rate. The store overlap alone will improve things I'd "exepect" the other way. The IEEE citation that someone else posted about a week ago tends to agree... and gives hard data rather than expectations. >>I quite agree that most compilers for BOTH classes of machines >> are very poor. This is easy to understand, the compiler markets >> have largely been wrecked, and no company can make money selling >> high quality C compilers for the end user market. There are just >> too many people who want cheap compilers, so this is all the >> market can provide. My brother has always complained that he has >> a multi-million dollar investment depending on a compiler which >> costs $400. He has always said that he would be happy >> to pay 100 times that amount if it would really make a difference >> insupport and quality. This seems to me far from the truth and exactly what my code fragments were meant to show. Look at the code and the timings for some of the PC compilers (say, Microsoft 5.0). They are MUCH better! And for such a (ok folks, here it starts again, get your k-keys (rn) ready) SHITTY microprocessor from the compiler writers point of view. -- newton@csvax.caltech.edu {ucbvax!cithep,amdahl}!cit-vax!newton Caltech 256-80 818-356-6771 (afternoons,nights) Pasadena CA 91125 Beach Bums Anonymous, Pasadena President I'm never biased...
darryl@ism780c.UUCP (08/19/87)
In article <3670@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> newton@cit-vax.UUCP (Mike Newton) writes: >Look at the code and the timings for some of the >PC compilers (say, Microsoft 5.0). They are MUCH better! And for >such a (ok folks, here it starts again, get your k-keys (rn) ready) >SHITTY microprocessor from the compiler writers point of view. Sigh. Although compiler writers have many reasons to dislike previous intel kludges, the 386 is actually reasonably pleasant to work on. There are no more segment register hassles (set 'em and ferget 'em, 32 bit offsets remove the worry--for now), and the general registers actually are reasonably general (ok, string move and shift counts still have to go into ecx, but that's nearly the only restriction). The chip is very fast; they originally had bit string insert and extract instrcutions, but they turned out to be slower in every case to the equivalent shift and mask code, so they took them out. The only place they are still weak is in the area of the coprocessor--their coprpocessor interface is less flexible, general, and has lower performance than the 68020's. In particular, the 386 is so complicated that the coprocessor no longer runs asynchronously from the 386 itself... Now, I realize that I haven't supplied you with any hard numbers, but these are my objective observations after having lived with the chip for nearly 2 years, part of which involved the design and implementation of a C compiler. --Darryl Richman, INTERACTIVE Systems Corp. ...!cca!ima\ >-!ism780c!darryl ...!sdcrdcf/ The views expressed above are my opinions only.