Re: what kind of computer for programmer ?

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 10:58:43 -0500, Rob Thorpe wrote
(in article
<1119887923.577165.133820@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):


> I did a small test:
> The machine I'm sitting in front of is a 2.4GHz Intel Xeon with 1GB of
> RAM and a ATA-100 hard-disk. I'm compiling a ~16Kloc C and C++ program
> I maintain with Microsoft Visual C++ v6. For the purpose of this test
> I rebuilt all the files, including the header-cache file. From the
> local disk this took 9 seconds, from a ramdisk (using AR soft ramdisk)
> it took 3 seconds.

No doubt. The problem is, projects small enough to fit easily
into most ramdisk setups compile so quickly that they aren't
needed. The really big projects, which do take a long time to
compile, and really need a speeding up, are too large to fit in
any but the really agressively sized ramdisks (think 64-bit
address spaces, or at least >32).

As such, more RAM to avoid paging, parallel compiles (if your
system supports make -j and particularly with multiple
processors), and a very good storage subsystem are the better
general solution. This is precisely why ramdisks have gone from
being common to being rare over time.

> For compiling only a few files the ram-disk is not likely to be any
> quicker.

Exactly.


> I think the difference is also less on the free-unices with GNU tools.

Any UNIX system, free or not is probably faster on equivalent
hardware.


.

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