*BSD News Article 2765


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From: merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: 386BSD-0.1/BRLCAD4.0 benchmark -- poor floating point performance
Message-ID: <l7g763INNbk0@neuro.usc.edu>
Date: 30 Jul 92 16:45:55 GMT
References: <l7ctu0INN880@neuro.usc.edu> <158bshINNt1b@disaster.Germany.EU.net>
Sender: merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
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NNTP-Posting-Host: neuro.usc.edu

This may seem like a silly question -- but I don't have a good grasp on the
(in)compatibility between the various UN*X/386 system binary code formats.

GCC runs on my 386BSD box as well as on my SCO UNIX SYSV/386 3.2r2.0 ODT 1.1
box.  GCC apparently generates code in two formats -- COFF and something else.
GCC utilities (ld?) appear to be capable of dealing with COFF and something
else -- but this may be a compile time option.  GCC on my SCO box seems to be
able to link to SCO's libm.a with no problem.  GCC on my 386BSD-01 box seems
to be unhappy with the SCO libm.a format.

So, (1) could someone post some brief description of the two GCC formats and
the formats generated by ATT/SCO rcc (pcc) and cc (microsoft's cc).  Why the
differences?  Do some tools exist to convert between these formats?

For the purpose of testing/benchmarking BRLCAD on 386BSD, is there some way
to convert an extra copy of SCO's libm.a (I have a full copy of the SCO ODT
1.1 development system sitting on a shelf -- not installed anywhere -- full
license numbers available if someone from SCO gets concerned) to run on the
386BSD system -- so the routines from SCO's libm.a could be linked into the
BRLCAD benchmark code and run under 386BSD-0.1?

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Alexander-James Annala
Principal Investigator
Neuroscience Image Analysis Network
HEDCO Neuroscience Building, Fifth Floor
University of Southern California
University Park
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520
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