Re: Speed of Quartz (was: optimizing compilers)
Re: Speed of Quartz (was: optimizing compilers)
- Subject: Re: Speed of Quartz (was: optimizing compilers)
- From: Warren Nagourney <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 10:27:03 -0800
I have been reading this thread with interest and have been somewhat
puzzled by the complaints about the speed of Quartz, since my own
experiences have been so different. This last example is so thoroughly at
odds with what I have observed that I thought I would give my own anectodal
experience.
Using the *public beta* of OS X and as a rank novice Cocoa programmer, I
wrote a program which plotted a theoretical resonance curve consisting of
400 points drawn using NSBezierPath in a fairly small loop. Each point was
the result of the analytical inversion of a 10x10 (sparse) matrix and I
included three sliders to continuously change in real-time three of the
parameters which went into drawing the curve.
The results were very rewarding, IMHO. The curves updated extremely
smoothly as the sliders were moved, producing beautiful, antialiased
curves. The "framerate" was high enough that absolutely no jitter was seen
as the sliders were moved. It was impossible to get ahead of the machine -
as fast as the sliders moved, the curve folllowed.
This was done on primitive hardware: a beige G3 with 256 meg of ram and
updated with a 400 MHz G3 card.
I was driven to do this in order to duplicate a very similar program which
was written (by someone else) on an '040 NeXT 10 years ago and which was
very impressive to me. The results of my Cocoa program really convinced me
of the power of Cocoa and Quartz (and OpenGL - I also generated some
dynamically updated 3D surfaces which impressed me with the speed of Cocoa
OpenGL).
Again, these programs were written by one who was (and still is) a very
unsophisticated Cocoa programmer and really demonstrate the power of the
frameworks which Apple has provided.
cheers,
Warren Nagourney
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Warren Nagourney <email@hidden> Voice: 206-543-9585
University of Washington 206-543-0143
Physics Dept., Box 351560, Seattle, WA 98195 Fax: 206-685-0635