Bad performance on alpha? (make buildworld)

[Nikos Ntarmos]

Hi there.

On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 07:21:03PM +0100, Oliver Lehmann wrote:
> I run several buildworld's on both, an Alpha EV56 and a Intel
> PII. I'm wondering that the Pentium beats the Alpha. Both systems
> have INVARIANTS* and WITNESS* disabled. Furthermore, no special
> tweakups - nearly "out of the box" configured.

IIRC the 600MHz EV56's performance wrt integer operations (such as
compiling) is somewhere in the vicinity of a 400MHz P-II, so the
difference you see in turn-around times when buildworld'ing isn't
quite that big. If the operations were identical, you should see
better times when building on the alpha. However, also take into
account that compiling (and optimizing) for a RISC CPU, apart from
generating larger binaries, is AFAIK supposedly more difficult than
compiling (and optimizing) for a CISC CPU. Let alone when compiling
using a compiler compiled with a compiler (nice, huh?) highly
optimized for x86 platforms but not as good when it comes to the AXP
arch.

\n\n

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 Nikos "Noth" Ntarmos    | < ntarmos at ceid dot upatras dot gr >
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