XO-1(.75)

[Yioryos Asprobounitis]

----- Original Message -----

> From: James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org>
> To: Yioryos Asprobounitis <mavrothal at yahoo.com>
> Cc: OLPC Devel <devel at lists.laptop.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2013 8:44 AM
> Subject: Re: XO-1(.75)
> 
> On Wed, Jul 03, 2013 at 10:02:15PM -0700, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:
>>  ----- Original Message -----
>> 
>>  > From: James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org>
>>  > To: Yioryos Asprobounitis <mavrothal at yahoo.com>
>>  > Cc: OLPC Devel <devel at lists.laptop.org>
>>  > Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2013 2:10 AM
>>  > Subject: Re: XO-1(.75)
>>  > 
>>  > On Wed, Jul 03, 2013 at 02:21:08PM -0700, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:
>>  >>  I'm using the XO-1.75 a bit more these days and gives me a 
> sense of
>>  >>  XO-1 performance wise.  So I compared my (500/200 overclocked) 
> XO-1
>>  >>  running F14/os885/Sugar-0.94 to XO-1.75 running
>>  >>  F-18/13.2.0-11/Sugar-0.98.
>>  > 
>>  > Since some general performance work was done between those software
>>  > versions, the comparison is uninteresting.  Compare 13.2.0-11 across
>>  > XO-1 and XO-1.75, or compare XO-1 across os885 and 13.2.0-11,
>>  > depending on what you are looking to prove.
>> 
>>  This comparison has been done a couple of months ago and is clear
>>  that F18/S0.98 taxes the systems considerably.
> 
> Yes, it does seem that way.  I tried 13.2.0-n on XO-1 recently and
> felt it was quite slow, but I couldn't be sure it wasn't because my
> XO-1.75 and XO-4 experience influenced me.
> 
>>  What I found interesting in this "unmatched" comparison was the
>>  inconsistency.
> 
> I don't see any inconsistency though, because the comparison was
> unmatched to begin with.  Variables you changed included overclocking,
> the CPU, the memory, the internal storage, the touchpad, the kernel,
> the base operating system, the frame buffer, the X server, the OLPC
> utilities, and Sugar.  All I can draw from the results is that you
> changed a lot of things and a lot of things were different.

But this is exactly the point!
When a _lot_ of things are changing and you have two groups of activities one going one way and the other  the opposite, you look for the "least common denominator" that will hopefully point to the problem (this is is a very common approach in multi-variable problems).

> 
>>  They might point to specific stacks in the
>>  architecture and/or core OS that may need attention (I originally
>>  thought was that activities with an extended non-python component or
>>  proportionally less gtk3, fair better on the XO-1.75 - but what do I
>>  know ;).
>>  Anyway, if the knowledgeable believe there is nothing to it or
>>  anything to be done about it,' there goes the comparison.
> 
> We wait for someone who seems interested in fixing performance
> problems on the old hardware.  It requires quite a depth of knowledge
> and a lot of time.  It isn't something that we can justify a huge
> investment in.
> 

I would think that the performance of newer hardware may be the one that needs attention but certainly can not prioritize it (unless if XO-1.75 classifies under "older" by now). 
Best