[self-interest] Self hw

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

On Tuesday 30 April 2002 09:19, coreQuester wrote:
> Would Self run on a SparcStation IPC(4/40)?

Yes, if you have at least 32 MB of RAM.

> What's the slowest hardware capable of running Self?

This is very subjective. After all, I used Linux and X Window on a 40 
MH 386 with 4 MB of RAM for about two years and was reasonably happy 
with it.

Urs used a SparcStation 2 (which is a little faster than your IPC) 
simulation for all the benchmarks in his thesis. My experience is that 
Self is usable on a SparcStation 10 or 20, but is really more fun on an 
Ultra 1 and up. On the other hand, I was quite happy running Self 1.0 
on Sun 3 machines. Of course, graphics speed didn't matter back then.

Here is part of an interesting table on page 109 of Urs' thesis 
(relative SPECInt92):

 SparcStation 2      1.0
 66 MHz Pentium      3.0
 80 MHz PowerMac     2.9
 SparcStation 20/61  4.0

This means that you might be much happier on a modern Mac or Linux PC 
even without the SIC (simple inlining compiler) than on a very low end 
Sparc machine. BTW, I have added a list of download sites to the Self 
swiki (http://www.merlintec.com:8080/Self).

One interesting information related to old machine is the cTimes table 
included for each benchmark in Self. Here is an example from 'globals 
benchmarks atAllPut cTimes':

  ss10_41 = 11
  sun3_60 = 304
  sun4_110 = 65
  sun4_260 = 65
  sun4_390 = 45
  sun4c_50 = 29
  sun4c_60 = 45
  sun4c_75 = 29

and here is 'globals benchmarks bubble cTimes':

  ss10_30 = 33
  ss10_41 = 21
  sun3_160 = 440
  sun3_50 = 408
  sun3_60 = 302
  sun4_110 = 185
  sun4_260 = 195
  sun4_390 = 123
  sun4c_50 = 67
  sun4c_60 = 163
  sun4c_75 = 67

-- Jecel