jdavis@gollum.UUCP (James P. Davis) (04/19/89)
Has anyone looked at the relative differences in performance between an X based windowing systems (like, for instance, OPEN LOOK or Motif) and Presentation Manager under OS/2. It seems that X is going to be slower, given the overhead of a networked environment, but has anyone examined this with a test application or benchmark that they can share their findings? Is it a few percent or an order of magnitude? If I am thinking about PC's versus X displays (where client and server are on different machines), is the performance difference going to be enough to sway me towards buying an OS/2 "workstation" rather than an X display (ignoring the difference in cost and availability, or lack thereof, of applications)? Any enlightenment is most appeciated. Jim Davis NCR Advanced Systems Development West Columbia, S.C. jdavis@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM
jdn@mas.UUCP (Jeff Nisewanger) (04/22/89)
In article <3024@hound.UUCP> smikes@hound.UUCP (S.MIKES) writes: >In article <219@gollum.UUCP>, jdavis@gollum.UUCP (James P. Davis) writes: >> >> Has anyone looked at the relative differences in performance between an >> X based windowing systems (like, for instance, OPEN LOOK or Motif) and >> Presentation Manager under OS/2..... > >Jim, > >There is a BIG difference between X and OS/2-Presentation Manager, and I >mean BIG! For one thing, it would be unfair to even attempt to do a >one on one comparison between UNIX(tm) based systems with X versus OS/2 >and Presentation Manager -- the big loser would be OS/2, for the following >reasons: > >(1) OS/2 itself is hardly a stable operating system environment -- quite >the opposite of UNIX which is probably the most debugged operating system >ever written, even MVS. What is the basis for comparison. If you compare the kernel and base system software I think OS/2 is very stable. I have done a fair amount of system programming for it and am quite impressed by its stability. I have seen several major Unix ports that were buggier. OS/2 almost never "panics" even when pushed hard. Presentation Manager is a bit touchy but the base OS/2 kernel is very solid and the system calls to it are mostly well designed. If you compare feature sets Unix wins in the area of protection mechanisms but OS/2 wins big in other areas. It can page virtual memory into an ordinary filesystem. It supports multiple "threads" per process. It has a flexible process priority scheme. It has named-pipes which can be used to build "servers" that can be accessed in a completely network protocol independent way (by relying on the Lan Manager distributed filesystem). It can be painlessly tuned by editing config.sys with a text editor. It has dynamically loadable device drivers; no kernel re-linking bullshit. Installation is massively less weird than many Unix installation mechanisms that I've seen. >(4) OS/2 still has several problems; among them is the major issue of how >it is to support concurrent execution of native OS/2 and native DOS >applications -- it can't. This is a 286 limit. OS/3 will doubtless support this. >(5) OS/2 is a resource pig. Granted, X is not much better, but given that >X is implemented on UNIX based systems, the underlying operating system >takes care of sharing the available memory, disk, and other system >resources. This is one area in which OS/2 is still hurting, primarily since >it is still relatively new. The typical OS/2 system requires a minimum of >2 or more megs of RAM and at least an 80286 processor. The OS/2 developement >environment requires even more, and a huge chunk of disk space. It is >poorly supported by comparison to X, if you don't believe this, try calling >IBM or Microsoft for OS/2 technical support sometime; Microsoft will try >to answer basic or simple questions, but when the call involves deeper >involvement the tech support guys tell you that you should buy a $500.00 >per yer subscription to ONLINE, their SIG on GEnie(tm). When you combine Unix and X together you will chew up about the same amount of resources, at least. Disk space for Unix/X development will take AT LEAST as much room as OS/2. Try running Unix/X11 on 2mb. OS/2 technical support is at least as good as any Unix/X11 support I have ever encountered. > >(11) There are no toolkits or extensions yet available for OS/2 or >Presentation Manager; take a look at Andrew, Xt, OpenLook(tm), OSF/Motif, >or any of the other extensions available from DEC, Sun, Hewlitt-Packard, >AT&T and several other members of the X Consortium. > Part of Presentation Manager is the standard PM toolkit. It is in most ways equivalent to the facilities provided by other windowing toolkits but unlike many windowing toolkits for X it provides general coordinate transformations, stored display lists etc. It has better support for mouse hit detection within a graphic drawing. It has outline font support. It has a PostScript imaging API for wide lines, fancy clipping and sophisticated outline font effects. There is also now a Microsoft endorsed C++ toolkit from Glockenspiel Ltd. for PM that is source-code compatible for compilation on MS-Windows and X11/NeWS as well. I haven't seen the details yet but it is potentially a much better long-range solution than various other toolkits that attempt awkward "object-oriented" programming in plain C (the standard PM toolkit clearly belongs in this list.). PM also has a plan for supporting printing. There is coherent answer supplied for the X domain. The big drawback for PM is the lack of network transparency. It could also use more flexible graphics contexts and some of the calls are a little awkward. Nothing in life is perfect. I also feel awkward defending Microsoft/IBM software. They do put out a lot of crud but as far OS/2 and the basic capabilites of PM I think they have done a much better job than you give them credit for. Jeff Nisewanger Measurex Automation Systems ....apple!mas1!jdn
jdavis@gollum.UUCP (James P. Davis) (04/26/89)
------------------------ I thought that I would repost, in case somebody missed it. Is *anybody* looking at this? Or, is it proprietary? ------------------------ Has anyone looked at the relative differences in performance between an X based windowing systems (like, DECWindows, OPEN LOOK, or Motif) and Presentation Manager under OS/2. It seems that X is going to be slower, given the overhead of a networked environment, but has anyone examined this with a test application or benchmark that they can share their findings? Is it a few percent or an order of magnitude? If I am thinking about PC's versus X displays (where client and server are on different machines), is the performance difference going to be enough to sway me towards buying an OS/2 "workstation" rather than an X display (ignoring the difference in cost and availability, or lack thereof, of applications)? Any enlightenment is most appeciated. Jim Davis NCR Advanced Systems Development West Columbia, S.C. jdavis@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM
jordan@cs.columbia.edu (Jordan Hayes) (04/27/89)
James P. Davis <jdavis@gollum.UUCP> asks: Has anyone looked at the relative differences in performance between an X based windowing systems (like, DECWindows, OPEN LOOK, or Motif) and Presentation Manager under OS/2? I was told by Bill Gates that PMX (Presentation Manager under Unix?) was going to be (should be done by now?) implemented on top of X ... Can anyone confirm or deny? I was also told (not sure by who) that HP was doing (did?) it. /jordan
kemnitz@mitisft.Convergent.COM (Gregory Kemnitz) (04/28/89)
In article <188@cs.columbia.edu>, jordan@cs.columbia.edu (Jordan Hayes) writes: > James P. Davis <jdavis@gollum.UUCP> asks: > > Has anyone looked at the relative differences in performance > between an X based windowing systems (like, DECWindows, OPEN > LOOK, or Motif) and Presentation Manager under OS/2? > > I was told by Bill Gates that PMX (Presentation Manager under Unix?) > was going to be (should be done by now?) implemented on top of X ... > PM/X is Microsoft's implementation of PM for X-Window (sort of). It will require "enhancements" to X protocol in order to run. Therefore, it will not run on a "vanilla" X terminal or workstation server. That is, in order to run your PM/X application, you will need to be running Presentation Manager on your workstation. Take note: This means you must be running OS/2 and PM and the PM server software. So junk your Sun or PMAX and now get a 386 (thoretically a 286) based PC to use as your "X + delta(X)" terminal. Estimated price, at least $8K for this using a no-name clone with 8 (count 'em 8) megabytes of memory for decent performance. You want server source? Go work for Microsoft. It is possible that if MicroSoft gets the X Consortium to "enhance" X protocol to allow PM/X to run, you might (in the mid Nineties) be able to run a PM/X client and a PM/X server without any Microsoft or Intel stuff in the way. By the way, this 386 scheme means that you need another computer to actually run your clients. Don't go for PM/X. OSF/Motif is a compromise product between IBM and DEC in that SAA/PM look and feel are maintained while looking like DECwindows to the programmer. If your Corperate Decision Makers want PM look and feel, get Motif since it does not require changes to X protocol. Greg Kemnitz