[OLPC-devel] pygtk performance issue

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

Mitch Bradley wrote:
> The processor on OLPC is inherently slower than the processors that 
> are used in modern laptops.  To get ultra low power you have to 
> sacrifice something.  It seems unlikely that we would be able to hide 
> that inherent speed differential by a kernel change.  In the short 
> term, I don't know of any planned hardware changes that would 
> substantially increase the performance of file system activity on USB 
> drives.
>

Ok, this is the kind of feedback I was looking for. What about the 
internal flash? Is it going to be substantially faster than USB drives?

> I believe that "work smarter" is a key component of the OLPC plan.  It 
> looks like you have found some "low-hanging fruit" that is ripe for 
> the picking.  Improving pygtk to start up in a less "brute force" way 
> would benefit not only OLPC, but everybody else as well.

Definitely. But it's also important to prioritize the work. The whole 
point of this mail is to figure out how critical the "opening a bunch of 
files" issues is going to be on the final hardware/kernel.

Thanks,
Marco