Re: XFree 4.0 crashes with SRM

[Jeff Sturm <jeff sturm appnet com>]

Jay Estabrook wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 01, 2000 at 09:20:30AM -0400, Jeff Sturm wrote:
> >
> > Yay!  It works.  For a moment I was worried I'd have to go back to MILO,
> > or cripple my X server... that Voodoo3 sure is *fast* on 4.0.
> 
> By "cripple", you mean recompile it so that it doesn't use the MVI
> instructions? I hardly think that you'd notice any speed difference;
> how often do you think those instructions are generated by GCC?

hmm... good point.  It looks like GCC generates such instructions when
comparing bytes or words, to save one instruction and one register. 
Probably not much of a gain.

I had at first naively assumed there were MVI instructions in XFree86
for a reason, i.e. hand coded.  So what good is MVI after all?

> Be that as it may, I've been told that version 5.8 of SRM will have
> the MVI instructions enabled. It's possible that there may be an
> interim version of 5.7 which does also, but no promises, as I have no
> control over it's production. If such should come to pass, I'll
> announce availability on this list (at least).

Well, it's encouraging that Compaq is still maintaining SRM for a dead
machine.

--
Jeff Sturm
jeff.sturm@appnet.com