Squeak on PS2?

Andreas Raab Andreas.Raab at gmx.de
Mon Nov 19 21:14:10 UTC 2001


John,

> > The second port (PS2/Linux) was done by getting
> > the Unix sources and type "make". So if you can
> > get your hands onto a PS2/Linux version you can
> > port as fast as we did.
>
> Thanks Andreas
>
> As easy as that? I was thinking that there might be issues with
> primitives, plugins and the rest, but this sounds very reassuring!

It was a very pleasant experience. Sony has done a good job to provide a
compatibility layer that gets you easily started here.

> Generally, what were your impressions of PS2 as a Squeak
> "host" or Linux on PS2 generally?

Speedwise, Squeak runs pretty nicely (PS2 is based on a MIPS core which does
a reasonably good job - I don't quite remember the micro-benchmarks).
Graphics-wise ... well that's an entirely different question. You can
imagine how much overhead is introduced due to the presence of a pretty
complete X-Server. You _really_ want to go to the chip here.  We never quite
got to that point so it's not entirely clear what the performance is at that
level. But one thing's for sure - it'll perform better than with an X-Server
and even that was reasonable (felt kinda like a Pentium 200MHz).

Cheers,
  - Andreas





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