Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 08:24:26 -0600 (CST) From: "Stephen D. Spencer" <bsd-alpha@boneyard.lawrence.ks.us> To: "'Wilko Bulte'" <wkb@freebie.demon.nl> Cc: "Koster, K.J." <K.J.Koster@kpn.com>, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: /usr/obj required space Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10102140756320.16404-100000@madeline.boneyard.lawrence.ks.us> In-Reply-To: <20010213191103.A19426@freebie.demon.nl>
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On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, 'Wilko Bulte' wrote: > On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 11:46:38AM +0100, Koster, K.J. wrote: > > > > This seems funny, since on my x86 box the same tree is only > > > > ~330Mb in size. How come Alpha needs 200Mb more? Another factor in the Alpha's binary size is that it is a RISC. If you take a look at the data sheet for the 21164, it has a rather small instruction set consisting of relatively primitive instructions. Though I have not yet read this document carefully, RISC instructions historically tend to execute in no more the 4 clock cycles vs the more complex instructions associated with CISC technology that can take over 100 clock cycles to complete. In a nut shell, RISC chips require more instructions to accomplish common tasks. More instructions will yield larger binaries as well as the buffer and word size issues that have already been mentioned. If you know any hard-core Macintosh users, ask them what happened to the size of binaries and disk space/memory requirements during the transition from the 68x000 -> PowerPC. -- Stephen Spencer UNIX Systems Administrator Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept. University of Kansas To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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