Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 2:22 pm Post subject: a way to have a faster neooffice
i asked to a italian new macpro user to test neooffice on his new macpro (two dual core intel xeon 3GHz cpu, 2GB RAM, ATI X1900XT, 250GB) and those are results: starting neooffice after a reboot: 13 sec.; starting neooffice after a quit: 3 sec; opening a test draw file (http://www.venerandi.com/temp/test.sxd) <1 sec, and <1 second to have the little preview on the left...
so, instead waiting for the porting in turbo-pascal we can buy a macpro to use neooffice at the best _________________ eadem sed non eodem modo facere
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:05 pm Post subject:
Those numbers seem very typical of what I've experienced in my own limited testing on Intel based Macs. For better or for worse, it really does seem that Java is a lot snappier on the Intel machines. I think what it comes down to is that Java isn't really just Java...with HotSpot it actually compiles dynamically directly into machine code.
It would seem that the Intel HotSpot JIT is more optimized than the PowerPC one...seems to make sense to me as the primary PowerPC Java vendor (IBM) has their own VM and I don't believe that they share all of their optimizations with Apple or Sun. Given the focus of Sun themselves on x86-64, I'd suspect they have a better implementation than the PowerPC HotSpot.
One really has to wonder how this can be so after all the years of toking off of the "PowerPC is just as fast" pipe. For some things, yes, it was (and still is...vector permute anyone?) but for a lot of things the sheer power of the Intel chips is a lot faster.
Also keep in mind that Java and OOo are already multithreaded. They like multicore too I have no hard numbers on how much they really benefit, but in theory they should get a little speed boost (I wouldn't put it at a lot myself, but I really don't know the potential upside).
Oh, come on now ed! We've been over this many times and it's not the Mac JAVA, OK?
I'd have to agree. While my J2SE friend at Sun has told there their x86 JIT is highly optimized, there just isn't that much Java code in NeoOffice to optimize. In fact, the two biggest performance problems that I need to solve some day are not Java but optimize my text layout code and my bitmap scaling code.
With that said, I have noticed that on my single-core Intel Mini, NeoOffice runs significantly faster than my old G4 450 MHz PowerMac. Of course, things like code compiling is also much faster. With my new G5, the speed difference is much less, but the Intel Mini is still much faster.
I'm no expert on chip designs, but I have a hard time believing that the PowerPC chips weren't seriously slower for common applications than the Intel line of chips.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 9:29 pm Post subject:
Well, Patrick very well may be on the right track. All that I've noticed is that even on my G5 Quad some operations are visibly slower than even an entry level core duo iMac, for example checkbox drawing and response to the Invalidate call, and all my other Swing apps seem much more responsive. It may just be raw integer performance after all
Well, I've been hanging out for my next tax refund cheque to buy a new iMac. This gives me another excuse - er, rationale - to present to the Chancellor of the Exchequer
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I have no hard numbers on how much they really benefit, but in theory they should get a little speed boost (I wouldn't put it at a lot myself, but I really don't know the potential upside).
