[fpc-devel] "embedded" again

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

waldo kitty wrote:
> On 1/15/2013 06:01, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
>> On Tue, 15 Jan 2013, Sven Barth wrote:
>>> Am 15.01.2013 11:52, schrieb Michael Van Canneyt:
>>>> That is a weird assumption. I would go for the second one, hands 
>>>> down...
>>>
>>> I wouldn't if the second one is significantly slower than the first one.
>>> Otherwise I'd agree :)
>>
>> On old hardware, maybe, but these days ?
> 
> please define "old hardware"... PII 300mhz is "too old"? PIII 800mhz? 
> and of course, how much RAM would be considered "not enough"?

I suffered a massive drop in performance when my 4x PIII 2.9GHz died, 
and (wanting compatibility with the same type of pluggable disc sleds) I 
had to fall back to a 2x 800MHz for Qemu etc. People are giving away 
2GHz servers because they're five years old, or 2.8GHz games machines 
because their graphics have fallen behind: unless you have compatibility 
requirements there's limited excuse for struggling with anything slower.

For production use speed might not matter that much provided that it's 
offset by lots of CPUs/cores and adequate memory, but for builds you 
need brute-force CPU because FPC paralellisation isn't particularly 
fine-grained.

Which is a shame, because today we're collecting a Sun V880 that 
somebody local wants cleared from their office: 16x 800MHz CPUs in a 
100kg+ chassis. Great as a database, web server, or for things like 
Linux kernel builds; not great for FPC/Lazarus or as a Qemu host. Ho hum.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]