Date   : Mon, 10 Nov 1997 19:51:48 +0100
From   : "Mark Usher" <marku@...>
Subject: Speeding up BeebEm

I have forwarded this conversation I was having with Mark Cooke to the list
as there will no doubt me many of you who know more than I do about this,
and I'd appreciate some other views on the subject.

MU>>I was looking at the code myself recently. Although I cannot profess to
MU>>being a C programmer, more a learner in that dept, (I've programmed
though
MU>>for many years), I think that if BeeBem was spawning threads instead of
MU>>looping as it does, it would produce a significant improvement as the
MU>>processor would not be weighed down so much as it is at the moment.

MC>There threading *might* be a gain is in emulating the hardware more
MC>accurately by running (for instance) the via asynchronously, and
similarly
MC>for the CRTC.  However, this gains slightly in accuracy - but is a dead
MC>loss if you try to keep things in sync with a motherboard crystal.
MC>However, if you want to be more specific about how you think threads
would
MC>help (and which loops you're talking about in BeebEm) I would be
MC>interested in your ideas. :)

Like I said, I'm not an experienced C programmer, but I am quite experienced
when it comes to operating systems / general programming. I was looking more
at the way the emulator "gobbles up" my system resorces when it runs, and
I'm running a 200MMX 512KB 128MB 9GB system here, at work I've a Pentium II
512KB 64MB 4GB, and it's the same story. So I was trying to look at the way
it's programmed and think of ways in which the code can be optimized.

Comments anyone ?

Mark Usher
Programmer / Insoft GesmbH
and general BeeB enthusiast :-)