Performance on compilers

Performance on compilers

[Kjell Mesch]

Hi

I'm looking for some kind of performance test on ada compilers.
(Green Hill vs Gnat)
Can anyone point me in some direction? :-)

Anyone out that like/dislike GHS enviroment?
(sun/ppc_vxworks configuration of AdaMulti2000)

Re: Performance on compilers

[Ted Dennison]

In article <90B987268kjellmeschlinuxnu@130.100.128.24>, Kjell Mesch says...
>Anyone out that like/dislike GHS enviroment?
>(sun/ppc_vxworks configuration of AdaMulti2000)

We are running a Windoze/pentium-vxworks setup. Its pretty nice. We use emacs
instead of their editor though, and we generally call their builder from the
command line inside of a greater makefile. The only tool in AdaMulti that gets
direct use here is the debugger. I can say that it doesn't give us near as much
trouble as any of our other tools (Tornado, Stethescope, ClearCase, Windoze).

The GreenHills compiler comes with an impressive array of optimization options
as well. However, I've never seen the Gnat vxWorks product. If you want
benchmarks, I'd suggest you get evaluation versions of both systems and do them
yourself.


---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: Performance on compilers

[Kjell Mesch]

dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) wrote in
<xoLT6.2238$bA3.108925@www.newsranger.com>: 

>In article <90B987268kjellmeschlinuxnu@130.100.128.24>, Kjell Mesch
>says... 
>>Anyone out that like/dislike GHS enviroment?
>>(sun/ppc_vxworks configuration of AdaMulti2000)
>
>We are running a Windoze/pentium-vxworks setup. Its pretty nice. We use
>emacs instead of their editor though, and we generally call their
>builder from the command line inside of a greater makefile. The only
>tool in AdaMulti that gets direct use here is the debugger. I can say
>that it doesn't give us near as much trouble as any of our other tools
>(Tornado, Stethescope, ClearCase, Windoze). 
>
>The GreenHills compiler comes with an impressive array of optimization
>options as well. However, I've never seen the Gnat vxWorks product. If
>you want benchmarks, I'd suggest you get evaluation versions of both
>systems and do them yourself.
>

Well we have a evaluation copy of GHS, but the time to do more than what we 
have done is not there so..

gnat sux, well at least the debugger on vxworks target and the ghs debugger 
seems to be a gift from a higher force ;-)

btw Do you use clearmake and what is your feelings about it?

Thanks for the input.

/regards Kjell

Re: Performance on compilers

[Ted Dennison]

In article <90B9A15B5kjellmeschlinuxnu@130.100.128.24>, Kjell Mesch says...
>
>gnat sux, well at least the debugger on vxworks target and the ghs debugger 
>seems to be a gift from a higher force ;-)

We have had occasional "issues" with the GHS debugger, but for the most part its
really nice. I really don't know anything about Gnat's setup, though. I heard it
integrated fully into the Tornado toolset (including its debugger). I'd think
that would have its advantages, including the possibility of target-shell
debugging which we don't have, but I really don't know.

>btw Do you use clearmake and what is your feelings about it?

If you have ClearCase as well, you will find that you now have 3 options for
"make". There's "clearmake", "omake" (both of which come with ClearCase), and
"make" (which is used by Tornado to build kernels). I don't know what "make"
Tornado would use on your system, but on Windows it comes with a version of GNU
Make. Since we were going to have to use Tornado's make files anyway for our
kernels, I just stuck with that. It has the added advantage that GNU Make has
free online documentation, and I was already quite familiar with it. clearmake
supposedly is smart enough to consider things obsolete when you change your view
of it, even if it is now "older". However, our Ada sources have to be built
using the GreenHills "build" tool and our kernel sources have to be built using
GNU make, so we couldn't really take advantage of clearmake if we were to use it
anyway.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: Performance on compilers

[Corey Ashford]

If you are like ClearCase, you might want to consider Rational's
Apex Ada Embedded for Tornado II/III Solaris -> PowerPC product.  It has
integrated ClearCase as well as a lot of other features.

http://www.rational.com/products/apex/tornado.jsp

Corey Ashford
Rational Software Corp.


"Kjell Mesch" <kjell.mesch@linREMOVEux.nu> wrote in message news:90B9A15B5kjellmeschlinuxnu@130.100.128.24...
> dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) wrote in
> <xoLT6.2238$bA3.108925@www.newsranger.com>:
>
> >In article <90B987268kjellmeschlinuxnu@130.100.128.24>, Kjell Mesch
> >says...
> >>Anyone out that like/dislike GHS enviroment?
> >>(sun/ppc_vxworks configuration of AdaMulti2000)
> >
> >We are running a Windoze/pentium-vxworks setup. Its pretty nice. We use
> >emacs instead of their editor though, and we generally call their
> >builder from the command line inside of a greater makefile. The only
> >tool in AdaMulti that gets direct use here is the debugger. I can say
> >that it doesn't give us near as much trouble as any of our other tools
> >(Tornado, Stethescope, ClearCase, Windoze).
> >
> >The GreenHills compiler comes with an impressive array of optimization
> >options as well. However, I've never seen the Gnat vxWorks product. If
> >you want benchmarks, I'd suggest you get evaluation versions of both
> >systems and do them yourself.
> >
>
> Well we have a evaluation copy of GHS, but the time to do more than what we
> have done is not there so..
>
> gnat sux, well at least the debugger on vxworks target and the ghs debugger
> seems to be a gift from a higher force ;-)
>
> btw Do you use clearmake and what is your feelings about it?
>
> Thanks for the input.
>
> /regards Kjell

Re: Performance on compilers

[Kjell Mesch]

x@y.com (Corey Ashford) wrote in
<E166E69A95753648BC398E36BE9A3AB81173254C@sus-ma1it06.rational.com>: 

>If you are like ClearCase, you might want to consider Rational's
>Apex Ada Embedded for Tornado II/III Solaris -> PowerPC product.  It has
>integrated ClearCase as well as a lot of other features.
>
>http://www.rational.com/products/apex/tornado.jsp
>
>Corey Ashford
>Rational Software Corp.
>

What I'we heard a lot of companies in the avionics sector is moving away 
from Apex because of less development from Rational and a very high price 
tag.

We are however talking to Rational in Sweden as well as we use clearcase 
and some other tools as well.

Re: Performance on compilers

[tmoran]

>I'm looking for some kind of performance test on ada compilers.
  There was a performance test suite from PIWG (Performance Issues
Working Group?).  Look at www.adapower.com and www.adaic.com

Re: Performance on compilers

[Mark Johnson]

Kjell Mesch wrote:

> Hi
>
> I'm looking for some kind of performance test on ada compilers.
> (Green Hill vs Gnat)
> Can anyone point me in some direction? :-)
>
> Anyone out that like/dislike GHS enviroment?
> (sun/ppc_vxworks configuration of AdaMulti2000)

Another solution could be ACES - it is a huge benchmark suite (over a
thousand tests) which includes compilation speed, as one of its measures
(along with memory & CPU usage for the generated application). Many
people have had problems building w/ it. I've gotten farther than many
have but I've never been able to get all the tests to work. If you are
interested in a several day investment, look at...

http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ifi/ps/AdaBasis/pal_1195/ada/ajpo/testing/aces/

This seems to be the only site that hasn't discarded all the old data.
If you want to follow up on building the stuff under GNAT, I'll provide
that separately.
  --Mark

PS - with GNAT in particular, I've noticed having LOTS of memory makes a
huge difference when compiling big packages w/ optimization enabled.
I've seen memory usage grow to >170 Mbyte and a 10 minute compile time
(on an 800mhz, 512 Mbyte Pentium III) on a particularly large file. The
typical compile time is much better - I rebuild a few thousand packages
(for 22 main programs) in about two hours of CPU time - even with that
big one in the list....

Re: Performance on compilers

[Pat Rogers]

"Kjell Mesch" <kjell.mesch@linREMOVEux.nu> wrote in message
news:90B987268kjellmeschlinuxnu@130.100.128.24...
> Hi
>
> I'm looking for some kind of performance test on ada compilers.
> (Green Hill vs Gnat)
> Can anyone point me in some direction? :-)

Yes -- don't do it blind, get an evaluation support agreement (or whatever
name such things go by) from all vendors of interest so that you can get
meaningful results.  That way you know that the results you get for any one
of them are as good as they can be, and also that comparing them makes
sense.


---
Patrick Rogers                       Consulting and Training in:
http://www.classwide.com          Real-Time/OO Languages
progers@classwide.com               Hard Deadline Schedulability Analysis
(281)648-3165                                 Software Fault Tolerance

Re: Performance on compilers

[Kjell Mesch]

>Yes -- don't do it blind, get an evaluation support agreement (or
>whatever name such things go by) from all vendors of interest so that
>you can get meaningful results.  That way you know that the results you
>get for any one of them are as good as they can be, and also that
>comparing them makes sense.
>

GHS is willing to sell a license for trial usage over 6 months, well that 
nothing special.
What I find a bit unique is that they are willing to buy it back if we 
don't switch to GHS.
(We have allready used up 2*30 days evaluation copys, since the evaluation 
job is done when there is free time from current projects)

We are talking about a lot of licences here so they are willing to go the 
extra mile I guess.

Rational Apex is a product we have talked about as well. But I have heard 
roumurs that Rational is dropping Apex and that it has a pricetag that is 
so high that it's silly.


Now were thinking of running next iteration of one project with Gnat and 
GHS to see what would be the best solution.

All code is adapted to both enviroments so there would not be too much 
work. 

Misstake on my part

[Kjell Mesch]

Oops I got it wrong

GHS does not buy the licences back of cource, my mistake all the way.
I missunderstod the salesrepracentative, the deal is quite different.

shamefully Kjell Mesch