🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3241@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> steve@cs.hw.ac.uk (Steven Salvini) writes:
>
>Pro MIT server
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ...
>Con: ..., no accelerator board support, ...
>
>
>Pro NeWS/X server:
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>The server includes support for graphics accelerator boards plus server
>optimisation for Sun hardware.
>

It has been my understanding that the X11/NeWS servers (version 1.0 and 2.0) 
do not utilize accelerators, period.  I have heard rumors that version 3.0
will.  My benchmarks (using x11perf) show that the R4 MIT Server is, for the
most part, faster than xnews for all but a few operations.

On a separate, but related subject, Keith Packard, in his discussion of
Server internals at Xhibition a couple of weeks ago, indicated that he has 
tested, and found that (almost) none of the accelerated frame buffers (Sun, 
or otherwise) provide any usable performance improvement for GUI type drawing 
activity.  In a nutshell, he said that the overhead of setting up the 
accelerator pipeline, putting the instructions into the pipeline, and then 
closing the pipeline, negated any possible advantage.  

Keith also indicated that the R5 server will be even faster than the R4
server due, among other things, to newer, more efficient rasterization 
algorithms, and the judicious use of assembly.

Perhaps Keith would like to comment? 

-- 

Kaleb Keithley                               kaleb@thyme.jpl.nasa.gov

No flashy sig. No clever quips. No famous quotes. This space for rent.