From owner-freebsd-alpha  Wed Nov  1 23:25:11 2000
Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org
Received: from smtp03.primenet.com (smtp03.primenet.com [206.165.6.133])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP
	id A3FD737B4D7; Wed,  1 Nov 2000 23:25:09 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
	by smtp03.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA28049;
	Thu, 2 Nov 2000 00:23:20 -0700 (MST)
Received: from usr07.primenet.com(206.165.6.207)
 via SMTP by smtp03.primenet.com, id smtpdAAAlBayS2; Thu Nov  2 00:23:07 2000
Received: (from tlambert@localhost)
	by usr07.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA00778;
	Thu, 2 Nov 2000 00:24:54 -0700 (MST)
From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Message-Id: <200011020724.AAA00778@usr07.primenet.com>
Subject: Re: linux emulation
To: gallatin@cs.duke.edu (Andrew Gallatin)
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 07:24:54 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, obrien@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <14848.44982.354268.277746@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> from "Andrew Gallatin" at Nov 01, 2000 07:12:39 PM
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org

> The first bits of linux emulation for alpha has been committed to
> -current, (largely thanks to the heroic efforts of David O'Brien).
> 
> The emulation is currently good enough to support running Applixware,
> the compaq C compiler, and a few other random things.  Instructions
> for installing and running the Compaq C compiler are available from
> http://www.cs.duke.edu/~gallatin/compaq_ccc_instructions.
> 
> The reason to care about the compaq compilers is that they generate
> much better code than gcc.  Something like a 4x speedup is not unheard 
> of with floating point intensive apps.
> 
> This will (hopefully) be coming to -stable fairly soon.. 

This broaches a subject I've been pondering for a bit now,
which is probably going to provoke some flamage and gnashing
of teeth.

It seems to me that FreeBSD itself is 4x slower than it needs
to be on Alpha.

What are the chances of compiling FreeBSD itself with the
Compaq compilers?  This would seem to be the natural next
step, and it also seems to me that this could accelerate
the Alpha developement and increase general Alpha stability
immensely.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message