[H-GEN] Sorcery

[Jason Henry Parker]

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Robert Brockway <robert at timetraveller.org> writes:

> On 4 Mar 2002, Jason Henry Parker wrote:
> > Every now and again some wacko comes along and demands that Debian
> > recompile binaries so they're optimised for P3s or something.
> >
> > Whenever anyone bothers to actually run the numbers, the performance
> > increase is pretty dismal.
> I know the improvement is of the order ot 2-3% which isn't much really,
> but there is still someing appealing about the recompile all option :)

3% of a day is 43 minutes, and most applications never take a day's
CPU time.  The only candidates I can think of are stuff like the X
server, apache, squid, various databses, and so on---stuff that could
easily be recompiled on its own.

Most small non-interactive applications (rm, mv, ls, the standard
fileutils) will not run for long enough to reap the benefit---if the
process takes a second, we're talking about shaving 3 *hundredths* of
a second off that, *maybe*.

Most interactive applications spend all their time waiting for the
user anyway.  So vi and emacs can wait for your input 2 to 3 percent
faster!  Rejoice!

Most large, long-running applications (apache, squid, your X server)
should really be tailored for your use *anyway*, and, tahdah, most
more widely known and respected distributions of Linux and *BSD have
this capability anyway.

Remember, 3 percent of a day is only 43 minutes.  How many of the
processes running on your box *right now* have consumed more than a
day of CPU time?  Would you or your users have noticed a 43 minute
speedup?

Didn't think so.
-- 
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|                                                      jasonp at uq.net.au |
| You can be as loud as you want!  --Ann                                |
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