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Re: [platform-swt-dev] Re: SWT and Photon

The other obvious thing that comes to mind is that the Windows native
widget implemenation and graphics drivers may be faster than other
platforms ... no flames please.



                                                                                                                                           
                      "Chris McKillop"                                                                                                     
                      <cdm@xxxxxxx>                   To:      <platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>                                              
                      Sent by:                        cc:                                                                                  
                      platform-swt-dev-admin@         Subject: Re: [platform-swt-dev] Re: SWT and Photon                                   
                      eclipse.org                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                           
                      09/10/02 02:49 PM                                                                                                    
                      Please respond to                                                                                                    
                      platform-swt-dev                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                           




We shall see.  I am studying the other bindings and, for the most part, you
are using things like the win32 API in the same way that an application
written in C would use the win32 API.  This is not the case with the photon
bindings and is the only reason I can see that would account for the
difference in speed (ie: comparing win32 eclipse to a native app and
comparing photon eclipse to a native app).  Photon Eclipse (UI speed wise)
is a lot slower then a native application so the SWT must be doing
something
wrong.  A normal photon app never calls malloc/memmove/free to interact
with
Photon and so this makes it a prime "finger pointer".

Let the testing being!

    chris

--
  Chris McKillop <cdm@xxxxxxx>     "The faster I go, the behinder I get."
  Software Engineer, QNX                    -- Lewis Carroll --
  http://qnx.wox.org/



----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Wilson" <Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxx>
To: <platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 7:10 AM
Subject: Re: [platform-swt-dev] Re: SWT and Photon


> A ten percent change at the microscopic level is *guaranteed* not to be
> noticeable in the feel of Eclipse. You need to be shooting for at least
> double the performance unless it's an API which is called a ludicrous
> number of times. Even then, performance in the natives really is almost
> never the bottleneck. That's why we are so adamant about the need for
> benchmarks.
>
> McQ.
>
>
>
>
>
> "Chris McKillop" <cdm@xxxxxxx>
> Sent by: platform-swt-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> 09/09/2002 07:42 PM
> Please respond to platform-swt-dev
>
>
>         To:     <platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>         cc:
>         Subject:        Re: [platform-swt-dev] Re: SWT and Photon
>
> >
>
> > I'm going to apologize up front for posting this message to the
> > platform-swt-dev mailing list without asking you first. The comments
you
> > were making are *exactly* the kind of discussion I would like to see
> > happening on the mailing list, so I'm going to use this message as a
> > seed...
> >
>
> Love to use the list - no worries at all. :)
>
> >
> > What you say below about the "Photon style guide" reminded me of one of
> > the places where you have to watch out for "the bigger picture":
> >   - there are some places in the eclipse UI where code was made to work
> a
> > particular way because we were trying to behave like the platform,
> >   - and there are other places where the _eclipse_team's_ UI design
> people
> > specified a particular appearance,
> >   - and there are other places where some of the text of the UI was
> > mandated by the legal people to have a certain look&feel (like the
About
> > dialog),
> >   - and there are other places where the swt team made it work a
certain
> > way just 'cause it seemed like a good idea. :-)
> >  When each of these cases is occurring is not always obvious.
> >
>
> Yep - and I am not really doing anything drastic.  In fact, I have
> examples
> online of the differences in the chnages I am doing:
>
> http://qnx.wox.org/swt/
>
> Please - anyone and everyone comment.  Thus far it has primarily been
> picking which fonts are being used and how the Group widget is created.
> The
> changes are somtimes subtle, so it is best to have both the before and
the
> after shots side-by-side.
>
>
> >
> > As to the rest of what you've said, one of the fundamental design
> > philosophies of SWT is _no_custom_C_code_. When you talk about adding
> new
> > JNI methods below, I got *very* nervous. At the very least, before you
> go
> > down that path, you need to provide us with compelling benchmark
> > information which shows that writing C code equivalents of some of the
> > existing methods will be a *significant* performance win. That's both
at
> > the microscopic and the macroscopic (i.e. eclipse runs significantly
> > better) level. Just so you know, our experience on other platforms has
> > been that, writing C code for performance tuning purposes frequently
> > provides very little real-world benefit versus the equivalent
> JIT-compiled
> > java code.
> >
>
> See, I am not trying to change things algorithmically.  I totally agree,
> doing the algorithims in java vs. C will not be a huge difference in
> speed.
> But, if I can remove expensive system calls that don't need to be made
> when
> the function is written in C, there will be a big BIG win (thinking
> malloc,
> memmove, free).  So, where does one draw the performance increase lines?
> ;)
> It is very hard to measure the performance under Eclipse (macroscopic) so
> that will have to be a "feel" issue.  As for the microscopic - Would a
10%
> increase in speed justify the change?  More?  Less?
>
> Just so you know, I will be doing my test cases on a P166 - both macro
and
> micro.  This way speed changes will be more prononouced.  And it is also
> more indicative of the class of processors QNX and OTI's customers are
> using
> today with Photon.
>
>     chris
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> platform-swt-dev mailing list
> platform-swt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> http://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/platform-swt-dev
>
>
>

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