🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi netters!

Some time ago I asked here wether using a coprocessor in a 80x86 based machine
speeds up GUIs, in particular X-Windows. So far I have gotten replies from:
Eric Johnson (johnsone%camax01@uunet.UU.NET),
Jerry Whelan (guru@stasi.bradley.edu),
Arto Viitanen (av@cs.uta.fi),
Richard Krehbiel (richk@grebyn.com)
Thanks, guys! It seems that X-Windows originally used quite a bit of floating-
point arithmetic in its graphics routines, in particular for operations such
as arc drawing. However, after X11R3, most of the floating point arithmetic
was replaced with faster integer operations. But even the current source code
for X11R5 from MIT contains some modules that use floating point arithmetic.
So installing a coprocessor *does* speed up the X-Windows GUI. The speed gain
is probably not dramatical, though. I have been informed that it is quite
easy to demonstrate the speed difference between coprocessor/ no coprocessor
by running the X-Eyes program, which seems to use mainly arc drawing. As
opposed to X-Windows, the MS-Windows GUI and OS/2 Presentation Manager do
*not* use floating-point arithmetic in their graphics routines, so installing
a coprocessor does not speed up the GUI. However, application programs can
be sped up using a math coprocessor.

Norbert
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Norbert Juffa       email: S_JUFFA@IRAVCL.IRA.UKA.DE         Live and let live!