Re: GNUstep Solaris versus Apple MacOSX (performance comparison)

[Marcel Weiher]

Andreas Hoeschler <ahoesch@smartsoft.de> writes:
>We have a "Dual G4 533MHz 512 MByte" running MacOSX on the left side and 
>a "Netra X1 500MHz 736MByte" running Solaris 8 GNUstep on the right. 
>Compiling sources on the Solaris machine takes 4 times as long as on the 
>Mac.

Precompiled headers?

>The application itself also runs slower on the Solaris machine.

How much?  What is it doing?  Is it startup time or other?

I remember that we found startup times to be significantly slower
on Solaris than on NS/OS because of the missing linker-support for
uniquing string (and selectors) meant that these had to be uniqued
at runtime.

Also:  the Macs are actually pretty fast machines, at least compared
to Suns.  I found that programs were often significantly faster on
my cheapo 233 MHz beige G3 than on the Sun Enterprise 1 (I think)
that was our "company server".

>I 
>know the Netra is the cheapest Sparc machine you can get costing only a 
>fraction of the expenses for a Mac. However, since the Netra is 64Bit 
>and has more memory I expected both machines to at least have the same 
>performance. Where does this huge difference come from?

There is absolutely no way to say without having more details from
you.

>Now is this only hardware related - if yes, what are the essential 
>differences between the Mac and the Netra - or is this more software 
>related (GNUstep code, gcc,...)?

Again:  you will need to be a bit more specific.

Marcel
>From ahoesch@smartsoft.de Mon Dec 23 16:44:54 2002
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Hi,

thanks to all that responded to my question:

Richard Frith-Macdonald <richard@brainstorm.co.uk>
marcel@cs.tu-berlin.de (Marcel Weiher)
David Wetzel <dave@turbocat.de>

It was mentioned, that the latest gcc compilers are well known to be 
slow. Well, I can confirm that. Compiling stuff takes a while longer 
than on the Mac. However, I just did some performance tests with the 
generated binaries and to my surprise the performance of the compiled 
code is  pretty good on the Solaris GNUstep box. Yeahh!!

David mentioned that the Netra also runs NetBSD. Wow!? However, I got 
used to Solaris in the meanwhile and like it pretty much. Imagine a 
Sunfire 6800 or even an affordable Sunfire 280 R running a web 
application written in GNUstep Objective-C. That should easily 
outperform any Mac. :-)

Regards,

    Andreas


Original question:

>> we are just in the process of porting our business logic from Cocoa to 
>> GNUstep. This question is probably not only GNUstep related but might 
>> also depend on the used hardware. However, I would like to ask what 
>> experiences others have made with the performance of applications 
>> ported fom Cocoa to GNUstep
>>
>> We have a "Dual G4 533MHz 512 MByte" running MacOSX on the left side 
>> and a "Netra X1 500MHz 736MByte" running Solaris 8 GNUstep on the 
>> right. Compiling sources on the Solaris machine takes 4 times as long 
>> as on the Mac. The application itself also runs slower on the Solaris 
>> machine. I know the Netra is the cheapest Sparc machine you can get 
>> costing only a fraction of the expenses for a Mac. However, since the 
>> Netra is 64Bit and has more memory I expected both machines to at 
>> least have the same performance. Where does this huge difference come 
>> from?
>>
>> Now is this only hardware related - if yes, what are the essential 
>> differences between the Mac and the Netra - or is this more software 
>> related (GNUstep code, gcc,...)?