[Newbies] RE: Why Squeak is so sloooow?

[David Shaffer]

Milan Zimmermann wrote:
> On 2006 September 21 11:55, David Shaffer wrote:
>   
>> You're certainly right Brad but let me add that the Squeak 3.9 image is
>> unbearably slow on my linux-based laptop (2Ghz Pentium 4M, 1Gb RAM).
>> I've even tried VM's from 3.8 to Ian's recent 3.9 release.  It is too
>> slow for simple window operations and causes a gastly amount of CPU
>> utilization even under lite GUI use.  
>>     
>
> David,
>
> This is suprising, on my:
> 	- old Athlon 2400
> 	- SuSE9.3 
> 	- VM Squeak3.9alpha of 4 July 2005 [latest update: #7021], 
> 	- latest 3.9 gama 7058 image 
> 	- 1280x960
>
> I was just recently thinking "this is best speed I have seen since 3.7". When 
> doing simple windows operations (moving around, resizing etc) top reports 
> below 30%, always for a very brief period when doing the work (typically 
> below 20%).
>   

shaffer at localhost ~/Squeak/Squeak3.9g-7055 $ squeak -version
3.9-7 #1 Mon Sep  4 17:01:02 EDT 2006 gcc 3.4.6
Squeak3.9alpha of 4 July 2005 [latest update: #7021]
Linux localhost 2.6.17-gentoo-r4 #1 PREEMPT Thu Aug 24 18:31:06 EDT 2006
i686 Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.00GHz GNU/Linux
default plugin location: /usr/local/lib/squeak/3.9-7/*.so


> Yoshiki's test (higlight, alt-p)
> | a b |
> a := FloatArray new: (16 * 1024*1024).
> b := FloatArray new: (16 * 1024*1024).
> [a += b] timeToRun. 
> 268
>   
Under 3.9g-7055 I get numbers in the hundreds.  Average of about 157 ms.


> David or Antonio, if you would like to compare:
> (higlight, alt-p)
> [
> 1 to: 10 do: [ :i |
> XYPlotter example1 plot asMorph openInWorld.
> XYPlotter example2 plot asMorph openInWorld.
> XYPlotter example3 plot asMorph openInWorld.
> XYPlotter example4 plot asMorph openInWorld.
> XYPlotter example5 plot asMorph openInWorld.
> XYPlotter example6 plot asMorph openInWorld.
> ]
> ] timeToRun.
> ===> RESULT 17295 (hardware as above)


There is no XYPlotter in my 3.9g-7055 image.  I tried loading Plot Morph
and Plot Morph 2 from SqueakMap.  Neither worked so I'm guessing that's
not the source of this class for 3.9.  I'd be happy to run this
benchmark on the off chance it will lead to some information about why
things are sluggish.  I'm guessing, though, that it is a dead-end. 
"feels slow" is often hard to track down in benchmarks.  Probably
something that does window manipulation would reveal the problem...

David