Hi Jon,

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 15:39:59 -0500, Jon Hylands <jon at huv.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 12:15:17 -0800, Tim Rowledge <tim at sumeru.stanford.edu>
> wrote:
> 
> > For a long time the gcc optimizer simply wouldn't work for building
> > Squeak on ARM. I think the problem version(s) was about 2.95-ish. On
> > the old NetWinders that made for approx a halving of performance.
> 
> He's running -O2 in the compiler.

Yep - and I'm using a 3.4.2 version of gcc. I work with the ARM at
work, and we've discovered that the ARM compiler (from ARM as opposed
to gcc) produces code which is about 50% smaller than gcc.

I may try to compile parts of squeak using the ARM compiler and see if
that makes any difference. I think I'll need to compile to assembler
and then write a script to change ARM assembler to gas.

I'm also going to try compiling in thumb mode. The version I built was
compiled in "normal" 32 bit mode. Thumb mode uses a 16 bit
instructioin set and often produces a smaller exeuctable, which means
fewer memory fetches which means higher performance.

I'm also talking to the gumstix guys to see what the memory is
configured like.  The RAM on the gumstix can run upto 133 MHz (there
are two RAM chips anyways). The RAM connects directly to the CPU.

-- 
Dave Hylands
Vancouver, BC, Canada
http://www.DaveHylands.com/