From: mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: AmigaDroids will *never* change
Date: 29 Jul 92 14:19:07 GMT
Organization: Amiga makes it possible
X-NewsSoftware: GRn 1.16f (beta) by Mike Schwartz & Michael B. Smith

In article <1992Jul28.200819.41960@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> thompson@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
> I did not ask the question properly.  Let me rephrase.
>
> Is it possible to run 47 applications at the same time with no loss
> of snappines/performance in the foreground?  By applications, I mean
> word processors, spreadsheets, databases, comm programs.
>

It really depends on what your apps do.  You mention word processors,
spreadsheets, databases, comm programs.  My A3000 CAN run 47 of
these - if there were that many Apps for the Amiga in the first place :)
When I posted my task list, I described how that 47 app number may
have been derived - simply from the amount of CHIP RAM available
on CBM's biggest machine (and CHIP can't be VM'ed no matter what!).

It depends on what the apps do, in terms of performance - snappiness
in the foreground.  If you ran, say, 47 calculation intensive apps,
they would each get 1/47th of the time and hence each would take
47 times longer to finish.  This is INTUITITively obvious.  However,
I can have those 47 CPU intensive programs running and still get
the feeling my text/program editor is running in the machine by
itself.  In other words, there is no loss of snapiness to the feel
of the GUI.

However, if you open 47 windows (as opposed to screens) on the same
screen, then you are asking the OS to do a LOT of calculations when
you drag one of those windows somewhere and the GUI becomes totally
unusable.  But again, this is an intuititive thing and I have never
found a need to do this except to experiment.

> In OS/2, I just run the application (say 32 bit Describe), and when I
> look at the task list, I see "Describe."  I also see certain folders
> and other Workplace Shell stuff.  If I were to count all of the WPS
> stuff (as tasks) with the applications, then sure, I could run 40, 50,
> maybe up close to 80-100 tasks.  But I mean applications.
>

In the task list I posted, there were almost 20 APPS and equivalents
of folders and other Workplace shell stuff.

> In Windows 3.1 on a machine with 4 megs of RAM, I can run about 20 or so
> applications before performance becomes unacceptable (average application
> probably is 100-200kb in size).  I haven't tried this many applications
> with OS/2 but I will in the future.
>

That's because windows apps busy loop as if they had the machine to themselves.
Amiga programs that do that are considered CPU hogs and poorly designed/written
apps.

> So, how many applications can be run in AmigaDOS without slowing the
> machine down a bunch?
>

Apps that wait for input take close to ZERO CPU time.  You are simply limited
by your machine's resources.  I generally don't run two disk intensive programs
at the same time because it causes a lot of thrashing on the hard disk and
slows things down even worse than 1/2.

> |  Charles A. Thompson               |  thompson@ukanvm.cc.ukans.edu         |

--
Amiga programmer of: GRn, MailMinder, Budokan, Beyond Dark Castle, Dark Castle
Sega Genesis programmer of: Dick Tracy and Marble Madness.
Mike Schwartz  (ames!zorch!amiga0!mykes or mykes@amiga0.sf-bay.org)
1124 Fremont Ave.
Los Altos, CA 94024
Xref: sparky comp.sys.amiga.advocacy:19887 rec.video.production:1189