[Info-vax] x86-64 VMS executable image sizes and memory requirements ?

[osuvman50 at gmail.com]

On Thursday, December 19, 2019 at 5:26:59 AM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2019-12-18, John Reagan <xyzzy1959 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > We're building everything NOOPTIMIZE so it isn't worth looking at.
> >
> > That said, 
> >
> > EDTSHR.EXE, Alpha, optimized: 493 blocks on disk, 179,712 bytes of code
> > EDTSHR.EXE, Itanium, optimized: 724 blocks on disk, 302,960 bytes of code
> > EDTSHR.EXE, x86, NOT optimized: 589 blocks on disk, 227,120 bytes of code
> >
> 
> Thanks, John.
> 
> I'm amused that x86 not optimised is better than Itanium optimised. :-)
> 
> Code density on Alpha is lousy compared to VAX and from what I could tell
> from reading the Itanium manuals, Itanium appeared to have even worse
> code density.

My experience with the C compiler is that optimized code is often larger than
unoptimized, depending upon what you are optimizing.

Itanium was designed with the assumption that compilers would improve enough to
make full use of the VLIW. In the end, that didn't pan out. In Clair's example,
the Itanium compilers could apparently deal with BLISS coding practices better
than the more unstructured MACRO-32.