Performance-oriented development in the commercial computing world

----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard" <legalize at xmission.com> To: "cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 9:00 PM Subject: Re: Performance-oriented development in the commercial computing world I would guess it depends on what you are doing. Console developers know that their target platform is not moving at all, so if they expect the next games to be any better or faster they HAVE to optimize or wait for the next console (and lose sales). Kind of sucks how some console games ported to faster desktop machines run like crap because they were designed for a console to begin with. How much optimizing can you do these days when the game you are building is using a game engine you purchased which might run faster on a Geforce GPU then an ATI or vice versa? I have no idea what embedded systems are like these days , they used to be processor, storage, and RAM starved so they did need optimized but you also knew exactly what the resources were. If you are programming shareware utilities you might want the code to work on a large range of machines and operating system versions so code size and speed might be optimized to work on older slower gear but you also might not be able to user tools that need specific OS revisions to work. People who design the OS that need backward compatibility while needing new features and eye candy probably expect more powerful systems to be available and design the operating spec for this (Windows 7 was not designed for a Pentium 1 for example). Years ago when Intel started using MMX instructions in the Pentium 1 line were developers smart in using that optimization in their code knowing that most of the new machines (but not all) coming out will have it? Things have changed quite a bit since the days of 8 bit computers where you knew exactly what the resources and chipsets were AND your app would be the only thing running.