🚀 go-pugleaf

Jan Vorbrueggen (jan@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de) wrote:
> In article <jgkDKMn2x.2KA@netcom.com> Joe Keane <jgk@netcom.com> writes:

>    Performance is a fine excuse but, take it from me, it's just an excuse.

> Nonsense. Ever tried reading a 50 MByte array iteratively with a working set
> of 2 MB (old example, scale up to the numbers to your liking)? When you're
> spending a third of your CPU just shuffling the data around, you sure don't
> want to spend another factor of three (8-)) just to satisfy that request for
> portability. 

On the contrary.  A former employer of mine uses a binary data file format
and prides itself on the fact that its data is portable across a wide
variety of hardware.  With this approach they can sell their software on
whatever the hot box of the year is and their customers never have to 
worry about losing their investment in data.  Since the customers _really_
value their data (and for a _very_ long time) this is a big selling point.

Obviously you're going to take a hit when you need to do data translation 
but that is an acceptable trade-off to the flexibility and stability
of hardware independence.

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Michael Brodeur                                 Digital Equipment Corporation
DEC FUSE Development                           110 Spit Brook Road ZKO-2/3Q08
mbrodeur@zko.dec.com                                         Nashua, NH 03062
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