[Freemint-list] FreeMiNT for 21st century

[Markus Fröschle]

Am 12.01.2017 um 15:54 schrieb Jo Even Skarstein:

> Because of it's dependancy of gcc 4.x. Yes, I know that there are native
> versions that runs on 68k Atari. "Runs", as in "works, but even with the
> fastest CPU and as much RAM as you can get it's still awfully slow". I
> have tested it on my Milan060 and it's just too slow to be usable.

My personal expirience is that - on a FireBee - gcc is definitely usable 
(with a little tweaking).

Gcc's compilation speed on MiNT is basically limited by I/O performance.

With MiNT's default settings, its awfully slow, I agreee. Disk I/O is 
limited to something like 1-2 MB/sec which is just too slow for a 
disk-bound compiler like gcc. For me, it's even faster if I compile on 
an NFS mounted filesytem instead of the internal CompactFlash card. On 
the FireBee, however, we have more than enough memory. More than every 
application I use is capable of make use of.

If you set MiNT's configuration for disk buffers to something like 100 
or 200 Mb, measured filesystem I/O performance increases to 30 MB/sec 
peak performance which dramatically affects gcc's speed. Of course it's 
still way slower than cross compiling on a recent multi processor 
machine, but with a little patience, I find it quite usable.

I could imagine that you might see similar speed increase on other 
machines with enough memory.  20 MB doesn't give any speed increase, but 
100 or more is really noticeable.