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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!ogicse!uwm.edu!wupost!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!news!brtmac From: brtmac@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (Brett McCoy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: abysmal performance of X in xgc and x11perf Message-ID: <BRTMAC.92Sep4124909@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> Date: 4 Sep 92 19:49:09 GMT Article-I.D.: maverick.BRTMAC.92Sep4124909 Organization: Kansas State University Lines: 16 NNTP-Posting-Host: maverick.ksu.ksu.edu I have a 386sx/16 machine without a 387. Most of the time this works fine, but in programs like ico, xgc and x11perf when they do floating point intensive stuff the machine more or less locks up and I generally have to reboot. I believe this is because of all the traps to the 387 emulation code in the kernel. I understand it being slow, but why does it bring the machine to a virtual halt? When I run ico everything will freeze for 5 or 10 seconds, then the ball will move a ways and other X events will occur (such as the mouse cursor moving), then everything will halt again. It seems that while the 387 emulation code is running nothing else can run and the emulation code has priority over everything else. ++Brett;