Re: The Kommunity vs. Dick Johnson

Isaac Connor (iconnor@penultima.ml.org)
Mon, 16 Nov 1998 08:17:25 -0500 (EST)


All this is well and good, but I think perhaps it may be of interest to
look the # of clock cycles, etc per instruction, etc. Looking at the # of
different opcodes used isn't a very good measure I don't think (I am
entriely open to the possibility that I am completely wrong... I enjoy
enlightenment). So indeed, Dick Johnson's code was fewer opcodes, and I
assume as a result slightly smaller code (by what, a few bytes?). But was
it actually faster? Did it contribute to the idea of a RISC architecture?
How portable is it? Will we need different sources for this function for
each platform, etc?

I am aware of many instances where gcc was able to produce better code
than some asm-advocates I know. It also seems to me, that you have to
look at register use, and how that affects code before and after the asm
function.

Anyways, as I've snipped the post I was replying to, I may have missed
whatever point the previous poster was trying to make... although there
was mention of incorporating Dick's optimizing methods into gcc. This
sounds like a good idea to me, and definately more productive than
actually using hand-coded asm. We definately need to analyze gcc's output
with an eye towards increasing optimization in gcc.

Anyways, good work everyone, and good day!

Isaac Connor
Rasca mp3 player author
Mach64 GGI driver maintainer

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