dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (01/05/90)
If I were going to bring the X11R4 environment over to my color DS3100 running
UWS 2.1, would there be any need to also bring over the R4 server?
If I didn't and kept the DEC server, would some R4 apps break?
If I did, how much of a lose would it be, assuming (reasonably or unreasonably)
that the DEC UWS server is somehow better optimized?
I could answer the 2nd question by running one of the X performance testers,
but I thought I'd ask before doing violence to my environment. This may
already have been measured.
--
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer@arktouros.mit.edu, dyer@hstbme.mit.edurws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) (01/05/90)
If I were going to bring the X11R4 environment over to my color DS3100
running UWS 2.1, would there be any need to also bring over the R4 server?
There's no requirement, although you won't get the sexier aspects of some
of the R4 clients without an R4 server (supporting the SHAPE extension).
If I didn't and kept the DEC server, would some R4 apps break?
Nothing should break.
If I did, how much of a lose would it be, assuming (reasonably or
unreasonably) that the DEC UWS server is somehow better optimized?
You will find that the R4 server is faster for some things, slower for
some other things, compared with the Digital server on the color PMAX.keith@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Keith Packard) (01/05/90)
In color, there are a very few operations for which the DEC product server is substantially faster than the MIT server; the two I can remember offhand are transparent stipples (including polytext) and zero-width lines. In most instances the MIT server equals or surpasses the performance of the current DEC product. Furthermore, the MIT server will use much less memory than the DEC product. This is certainly *not* because the engineering effort at DEC was inferior to the effort done at MIT, in fact DEC helped substantially in the release by donating many of the improvements which are in R4. The very short schedule that produced the DS3100 was rather tough on server optimization efforts, we at MIT benifited from the work that was done by them and were able to focus additional effort on some critical graphics operations (besides; DEC didn't have any competition to spur development like I did...) In monochrome, the choice is much easier; DEC spent little time optimizing monochrome before releasing the PMAX, for R4 I've spent a bit of time speeding up some common monochrome operations (text in particular) which make the MIT server a clear performance winner. The MIT server also has support for several new extensions which many MIT clients can use (SHAPE in particular). I don't expect to see those in a DEC product for several more generations. If you're not just out for the fastest server, but also consider things like support, testing, documentation, etc., you'll want to look more closely at the DEC products. They provide a good level of performance (the best that I know of) for a production piece of code. Keith Packard MIT X Consortium
klee@chico.pa.dec.com (Ken Lee) (01/05/90)
In article <1103@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM>, dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) writes: > If I were going to bring the X11R4 environment over to my color DS3100 running > UWS 2.1, would there be any need to also bring over the R4 server? You should also try the UWS2.2 server. It's faster than the R4 server at some things and slower at others. For most applications, you won't notice much, if any, difference. The R4 server does include the new SHAPE extension if you like round windows. The UWS2.2 server includes Display PostScript. Since development continues on both sides, there isn't an easy answer to your question, except that both the MIT and UWS servers will continue to improve. > If I didn't and kept the DEC server, would some R4 apps break? Only if they require the SHAPE (or other R4-only) extension. On the other hand, applications that require Display PostScript will fail on the R4 server. Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@decwrl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee
joel@pandora.pa.dec.com (Joel McCormack) (01/10/90)
Although a good deal of Keith Packard's R4 code is now as fast or faster than the DEC UWS 2.2 server on the DS 3100 (not for long...though it'll take awhile for my latest code to get through the long production testing cycle), there are some things Keith didn't mention. In particular, if you use any function other than GXcopy, or if you use a planemask that is not all 1's, in most cases the DEC server will be substantially faster. Also, the DEC server tends to be faster on small rectangles, lines, polygons, etc. On the other hand, round windows are very cool-looking. Not really all that useful, I suspect, but definitely cool. You won't get those 'till we merge with the R4 server. - Joel McCormack (decwrl!joel, joel@decwrl.dec.com)