[lug] Atom Based Computers

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Mon, 2010-07-12 at 13:22 -0600, Stephen Queen wrote:

> This strikes me as curious. I would think that a processor running at
> 1 GHz or better would compile fairly quickly. I figured that the atom
> was not as fast at the Pentium, but I didn't think it was a dog.  Any
> Idea why it compiles so slow?

Processor speed is not a good indicator of how fast a processor handles
a specific task.  Lots of file I/O might do better with more on-board
cache, for example.  Computationally heavy lifting might need a floating
point processor.  The PowerPC we have at work is 1GHz but doesn't have
floating point.  It also seems to have a slow interface to memory since
a 2048x256 array of integers can't be thresholded fast enough (<200ms)
even when heavily optimized with the compiler and in the code.

1GHz is fast but compiling, especially something like the kernel, can
really tax a processor and the system connected to it.

-- 
Michael J. Hammel <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org>