Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 16:30:17 EDT
From: dave AT babel DOT ho DOT att DOT com (Dave Hayden)
To: jde AT Unify DOT Com, djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: Performance

Jeff Evarts writes:

	I`m embarking on a build of a reasonably large project, (600K lines
	spread across 4500 files) and I want to make sure my performance is
	everything it can be before I start...
	
	I`m using a 486/33 with 16M of RAM (6M in a Ramdrive) That leaves
	about 9Mb of XMS/EMS.
	
	On the ramdrive are 3 directories /tmp, /bin and /lib.
	
	/bin contains make, gcc, cc1, cpp, as, ld, and go32
	/lib contains all the .a files from djgpp/lib
	
	That leaves ~3.5M free in the ramdrive.
	
	I have COMPILER_PATH set to d:/bin, LIBRARY_PATH set to d:/lib and TMPDIR
	set to d:/tmp
	
	gcc takes ~6 seconds to compile a 3-line "hello world" program.
	
	I notice a lot of disk chatter during that time, but I can`t figure
	out what it`s doing. (I don`t THINK it`s swapping, with 9M RAM...)

Try using a disk caching program instead of a RAM drive.  Make sure it stages
disk writes.  Hyperdisk will do this and I think newer versions of smartdrive
will too.  You should notice a dramatic improvement in all your operations.

With a staged write disk cache, you have to be sure to flush the cache before
turning your computer off.  With hyperdisk, you just press ctrl-alt-d,
wait for the second beep, and turn the power off.

Dave Hayden
dave AT babel DOT ho DOT att DOT com