| Re: Message From RSI VP of Engineering [message #27494 is a reply to message #27225] |
Wed, 24 October 2001 13:01   |
Liam E. Gumley
Messages: 378
Registered: January 2000
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Senior Member |
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JD Smith wrote:
[stuff deleted]
> The bigger trouble lies under the hood. IDL for MacOSX had some
> significant optimizations for display and within the core engine itself
> which are being tossed out with the bath water. The display speed will
> suffer, since in effect you're running through *two* levels of display
> (the X level, which translates drawing commands into the native display
> level). Any use of the much-improved OpenGL OS/hardware support will be
> impossible. The powerful AltiVec tuning already accomplished or planned
> for the OSX version will not be included.
>
> Here's a small sampling of a feature table comparison, far from
> complete:
>
> +=========================================================== ======+
> IDL feature comparison OSX Native OSX Straight Unix Port
> +=========================================================== ======+
> Interface Aqua X/Motif (server required)
> Display Speed Fast Slow
> 3D/OpenGL Optimization Yes No
> Altivec Vectorization Complete None, or limited
> Separate Core/IDE Threads Yes No
> Pervasive PDF Output Yes No
> +=========================================================== ======+
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see why the display speed
would suffer.
If I run IDL locally on an SGI console then it's the same issue, right?
That is, IDL direct graphics are translated from the X level into the
native display level. I've never had any complaints with display speed
in this mode. In fact, most of the time I run IDL on a remote UNIX host
while sitting in front of a PC running Exceed, and even then I don't
have major complaints about the display speed of direct graphics (which
admittedly is network bandwidth limited).
Cheers,
Liam.
Practical IDL Programming
http://www.gumley.com/
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