[squeak-dev] Bibi, a Scratch port to recent Squeak

Casey Ransberger casey.obrien.r at gmail.com
Sun Feb 24 09:05:51 UTC 2013


Hi Tim,

I'm especially interested in the performance profile that Cuis displays on the Pi; it has always outperformed the other dialects on the more modest hardware, and that's part of why I adore it so. Juan's changes to Morphic have removed a great deal of computational overhead, it becomes clear very quickly when running atop a lower end machine. 

I'm excited about the Pi. Truth is, I actually don't have the $35, but as soon as I do, I'll be doing what I can. Might have to wait until my birthday in May. Things are tough all over and it's been a bit since I've worked. Either way though, right now the Pi is probably the closest thing we've got to an interim DynaBook, so we should pay close attention to it. 

:/


Thanks for getting us up and running, Tim!

C

On Feb 23, 2013, at 10:24 AM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:

> 
> On 23-02-2013, at 5:58 AM, "Juan Vuletich (mail lists)" <juanlists at jvuletich.org> wrote:
>> What tinyBenchmarks performance do you get?
> 
> My Pi does about 42Mbc/s and 1.4Msn/s
> 
>> 
>> I use Cuis all the time on an Atom netbook (Cog, 29Msends/sec, 180Mbytecodes/sec). Cuis is nice to use here.
>> 
>> From time to time, I run it on my XO (300MHz Geode, Cog, 6.2Msends/sec, 39Mbytecodes/sec). Cuis is pefectly usable here. Sometimes I also run it on a PIII with a CPUKiller app, that brings performance down to XO levels.
>> 
>> Using slower machines is really useful. It really helped me find code that really deserved some optimization. The result is that, even if it looks cool, Cuis is usable on slow hardware?
> 
> Try to get a Pi sometime. You'll adore the sheer cuteness of having a machine that small and raw to play with. Download RISC OS and enjoy a *really fun* operating system as well.
> 
>> 
>> Have you tried Cuis on the Pi? Could you please do it and comment on the experience?
> It is certainly a good approach; even on the Pi it is bearable. I'm doing some work on how to boost the bitBLT performance right now (which is not so hot) and that would make a big difference. Eventually I hope to get the Cog vm working on it as well.
> But the real key is always better written systems code. Morphic has always seemed to have horrible scaling issues - with one window open it can be ok, open a dozen and     it    gri    nds   to          a      h h     aa    l     t.
> A long time ago Andreas made a benchmark that timed opening a couple of dozen browsers and it was possible even on a fast machine (of the day, so say 25% of the fast machines now) to see how the last few took so much longer. If anyone can fix that problem life would be a lot better. By contrast, open an MVC project and use a couple of dozen browsers. No performance problem there...
> 
> 
>> 
>> BTW, if needed, you can evaluate 'Preferences slowMachine' to trade looks for responsiveness.
> 
> That does help a little. It does still take a good 1sec+ top open the workspace text editing menu and at least 5 sec to open a browser.
> 
> 
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Strange OpCodes: ARG: Agree to Run Garbage
> 
> 
> 


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