*BSD News Article 10956


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From: andrew@werple.apana.org.au (Andrew Herbert)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: [386bsd] speeding up network with 486
Date: 11 Feb 1993 20:51:08 +1100
Organization: werple public-access unix, Melbourne
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References: <1993Feb9.150446.8956@cnplss5.cnps.philips.nl>
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rooij@mozart.cft.philips.nl (Guido van Rooij) writes:

>On the 486, a few extructions are present that are not found on the 386.
....
>be used within functions like ntohl and friends. Has someoen already
>done this? I think quite a performance gain should be possible.

I've submitted patches to Nate which add i486 bswap support to gas and the
kernel/libc ntohl routines.  From memory, ntohl() goes from taking about 20
clock cycles to taking a single cycle.  It makes me feel good knowing bswap
is being used, but the performance gain isn't particularly mind-boggling.
Once I get enough disk to build my own X11 system again, it will be
interesting to see what sort of improvement a few inline bswaps in all that
host-independent protocol code makes though...

Andrew