Re: optimizing compilers
Re: optimizing compilers
- Subject: Re: optimizing compilers
- From: Marcel Weiher <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 01:44:23 +0100
On Friday, February 1, 2002, at 11:09 , Erik M. Buck wrote:
Mac OS X is slow for many reasons that have nothing to do with compiler
optimizations. I am sure a better compiler would help, but many parts
of OS
X are slow because the algorithms used are bad and no compiler can fix
that.
Though 'bad' algorithms are probably a part of it, there are also simply
just much more capable and expensive algorithms at work. One example is
ATSUI. All text-drawing in the entire system is now done via ATSUI. At
least this was the claim at the WWDC text session, and the fact that
both the Finder and Mail will display Asian text (presumably correctly,
I have no idea) corroborates that. Someone correct me, but ATSUI wasn't
exactly heavily used under OS <X, was it? So my guess would be that
they simply have a bit of tuning to do to get the common-cases to avoid
all the expensive stuff. The expensive stuff will probably remain
expensive, but it should be possible to have the common cases avoid the
expense.
Then there is the pervasive anti-aliasing, another significant drain
(and cause of some display inconsistencies).
[agreement on more causes and improvements that will likely happen]
IMHO they should start the improvement with Quartz optimization and
Application Kit display semantics.
Very definitely, line-rendering is atrociously slow, and text, well...
Of course, there are also significant bugs to fix in the font/text
handling, so they have their plates quite full.
Marcel
--
Marcel Weiher Metaobject Software Technologies
email@hidden www.metaobject.com
Metaprogramming for the Graphic Arts. HOM, IDEAs, MetaAd etc.