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Subject: Re: SSDF rating list: two interesting observations

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:50:13 03/05/98

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On March 05, 1998 at 13:46:21, Ernst A. Heinz wrote:

>On March 05, 1998 at 12:29:24, Albert Silver wrote:
>
>>On March 04, 1998 at 08:39:33, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On March 04, 1998 at 01:15:54, Jouni Uski wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>This has to be operator error, because there is *nothing* in win95 that
>>>>>will cause this behavior, other than setting hash tables a little too
>>>>>big
>>>>>and causing swapping...
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>It is not any operator error. Specially in endgames Genius in dos (/X)
>>>>mode is often 2X faster, than windows version even with about same
>>>>hash sixe.
>>>
>>>I don't want to get into a heated argument here, but my background is
>>>operating system development, and I've been in that environment for
>>>almost
>>>30 years, and I can't think of a single reason why a program would run
>>>2x
>>>slower under win95, if you discount the paging problem.  And if you
>>>discount
>>>the problem of having multiple applications running and sharing cpu
>>>resources.
>>>
>>>Other than those two things, there is *nothing* I can think of that
>>>would
>>>cost you 2x.  You ought to run the windows resource monitor to see what
>>>is
>>>going on, because I have never seen this outside of the two exceptions
>>>mentioned above...
>>
>>Well, I can't comment on Genius 5 as I don't have it, but I have noticed
>>a similiar (80% difference on the average) performance hit when running
>>Mchess 7.01 in DOS as opposed to Win95. I can assure that it is not due
>>to any TSRs or other software running in the background as if I call up
>>the special Rebel9 windows shortcut it runs almost identically in speed
>>as when run in DOS. I have no explanation for it but I can give you test
>>suite results with the resource monitor's results as well for your
>>examination.
>>
>>                               Albert
>
>A plausible explanation for this strange behavior might be that task
>switches under Windows NT/95 badly thrash some CPU internals (caches,
>pipelines, branch prediction units etc.) -- I remember having read
>some tests which suggest exactly this. Some integer-bound applications
>therefore seem to run much slower under Windows NT/95 than under DOS.
>
>=Ernst=

This is certainly possible, but if you are *only* running a chess
program,
what possible task switches could be done, other than to occasionally
flip
into the win95 interrupt handler for clock interrupts?



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