[Info-vax] VSI OpenVMS Alpha V8.4-2L1 Layered Product Subset Available

[John Reagan]

On Monday, July 10, 2017 at 2:09:56 PM UTC-4, clair... at vmssoftware.com wrote:
> On Monday, July 10, 2017 at 1:34:29 PM UTC-4, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> > Den 2017-07-09 kl. 22:45, skrev Jan-Erik Soderholm:
> > 
> > > 
> > > Note (and as the subject of this thread says) that all year it has
> > > been talks about a 8.4-2L1 Alpha version. More or less a recompile
> > > of the current 8.4-2L1 for Itanium. I noticed now that what was
> > > downloaded earlier today was ALpha 8.4-2L2. The cover letter (dated
> > > June-2017) says:
> > > 
> > 
> > Now 2L2 is also official on the VSI site:
> > 
> > http://www.vmssoftware.com/index.html
> > 
> > http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/07/prweb14487932.htm
> > 
> > "Depending on the specific CPU and operating system features a customer’s
> > application uses, the new Alpha V8.4-2L2 release could render performance
> > improvements of between 15% and 50%. [...]", said Eddie Orcutt
> 
> Those are real numbers from some tests we ran. Here is my simplistic way to look at it. Every execlet is 5%-10% smaller and RMS is 15% smaller, compared to unoptimized (the standard build). That means many, many code paths in the heart of the operating system are shorter with the use of byte/word instructions. You can certainly make a more precise analysis but that was from my quick look at comparing the result disks from the 2L1 and 2L2 builds, picked a bunch of routines and looked at the generated code.

Not to nitpick, but to avoid confusion.  The standard build is NOT unoptimized.  The build uses the default of /OPT=LEVEL=4 for all compiles.  However, the default /ARCH value is EV4 (which also sets the default for /OPT=TUNE).  We added /ARCH=EV6 to the compilations.  We did not add/remove/change any /OPT qualifiers.