Subject: Re: [stella] A warning to newbies -- every cycle becomes sacred! From: "Mark Graybill" <saundby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 17:01:06 -0700 |
Build engineer is I think what the official title is, but release management is part of the deal. -Mark G. ----- Original Message ----- From: <tower@xxxxxxxxx> To: <stella@xxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 12:30 PM Subject: Re: [stella] A warning to newbies -- every cycle becomes sacred! > > Does this mean your wife is a release engineer? > > </Chad> > > > > > "Mark Graybill" > <saundby@foothil To: <stella@xxxxxxxxxxx> > l.net> cc: > Sent by: Subject: Re: [stella] A warning to newbies -- every > owner-stella@big cycle becomes sacred! > list.com > > > 05/06/03 04:45 > PM > Please respond > to stella > > > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Matthew Ozor <matt@xxxxxxxx> > To: <stella@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 7:30 AM > Subject: Re: [stella] A warning to newbies -- every cycle becomes sacred! > > > > Visual Basic is for writing programs faster not writing fast programs. > > Worrying about cycles in 2 GHZ machines is unnecessary. > > Usually, yes, but that's not entirely true. It's possible to squander any > amount of computing resources, since the resources are always finite but > the > ability to squander them has no known limit. > > As a case in point, there is the computing environment my wife supports. > They do builds of a software product on a high end multiprocessor system > with a number of other systems supporting it. It was taking about 12 hours > to do a build on these systems before they decided to do an upgrade. They > need to be able to do about 3 builds a day. The upgrade increased processor > speed and the number of processors to result in about a doubling of the > available CPU cycles, while also increasing the available RAM by about 50%. > They were shocked when the upgrade only resulted in the builds being > reduced > to about 10 hours each. > > After the upgrade debacle they finally allowed my wife to start > implementing > some of a laundry list of fixes she had recommended they do before spending > money on more hardware. She implemented the fixes more or less in her spare > time around the other work she does on the systems, and also put together > another server out of old cast-off equipment to test her fixes. The test > hardware has less than 1/10th the CPU cycles, and less than 1/2 the RAM of > the production hardware. The build now takes about 6-8 hours on the test > hardware, and just over 3 hours on the production hardware. > > The software they use to run builds is all written in Unix shell script, > awk, perl, and other RAD languages. One of their biggest problems was > profligate abuse of the Unix 'find' command (any use of which borders on > abuse, IMO.) > > So I say go on counting cycles and thinking about optimizations, even in > VB. > There are places in code where you can optimize the heck out of it and it > won't make a bit of difference. But there are also places in code where > only > trimming a few parts of a percent off the time can pay off big time. > Working > in a constrained enviroment like the 2600 is great training for learning > rules of optimization that are applicable at any level. > > -Mark G. > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------- > > Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ > Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/ > > > > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------- > Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ > Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/ > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/
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