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- From: tim@apple.com (Tim Olson)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
- Subject: Re: Farewell to the Mac? (not flame)
- Message-ID: <tim-231192144121@129.38.222.43>
- Date: 23 Nov 92 20:55:39 GMT
- References: <1992Nov17.193022.44891@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <trimble.722112979@ph-meter.beckman.uiuc.edu> <1992Nov19.005422.15975@ryn.mro4.dec.com> <Bxzry1.9D4@world.std.com> <1992Nov23.093203.25563@etek.chalmers.se> <1992Nov23.164310.24876@ryn.mro4.dec.com>
- Sender: daemon@Apple.COM
- Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.hardware
- Organization: Apple Computer Inc. / Somerset
- Lines: 40
-
- In article <1992Nov23.164310.24876@ryn.mro4.dec.com>,
- akhiani@ricks.enet.dec.com (Homayoon Akhiani) wrote:
- >
- >
- > In article <1992Nov23.093203.25563@etek.chalmers.se>, janolov@cdg.chalmers.se (Jan-Olov Lantto) writes:
- > |>From: janolov@cdg.chalmers.se (Jan-Olov Lantto)
- > |>Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
- > |>Subject: Re: Farewell to the Mac? (not flame)
- > ............
- > |>Quote from Apple Direct July 1992 concerning emulating 680x0:
- > |>
- > |>"Pagemaker spent 88 percent of its total execution time in the Toolbox,
- > |>while the numerically intensive Excel still spends about two-thirds (67
- > |>percent) of its time there."
- > |>
- >
- > Maybe I am missing something here, programs that do numerical processing using
- > the FPU or integer processing using 68xxx will be slower on PowerPC.
- > it does'nt matter if "Excel spends about two-thirds of its time in ROM" on a
- > 68xxx machine. if you probably run it on PowerPC and the look at the precentage
- > of time spent in ToolBox you will find that two-thirds of its time in spent in
- > emulation code. The above statement about ratio's is a famous benchmarking
- > trick.
- >
- > If I change a number in my Lotus spreedsheet, and it happen to recalculate
- > the numbers, how can it be faster on emulation code?
-
- The point of the quote from Apple Direct is that, even in "numerically
- intensive"
- code, most of the processing time is spent in Toolbox routines. Some or all
- of
- the Toolbox routines could be recoded in native PowerPC code, running at
- full
- speed on a PowerPC machine; only the application code need be emulated.
- Then
- it's just an application of Amdahl's law to show the overall speedup.
-
- -- Tim Olson
- Apple Computer Inc. / Somerset
- (tim@apple.com)
-