(c) freeman.psycho .................................................... PC vs ZX. Reading the ZX (and also PC) press, sometimes you come across some strange parallels drawn by the authors of the articles between these platforms. And it all comes down to slandering the hostile platform and his elevation. In my opinion, this is absolutely unacceptable, so as the authors are either not aware of the possibilities of this or that platforms, or they only know their platform, without understanding anything about another. I mean its hardware part. Here, for example, favorite phrase of spektrumists: pussy Mazda, because... yes because programs on pisyuk are written not in assembler, but in SI etc. As a result, programs run slower due to their lameness pisish programmers. Hm. Let me clarify something here. Yes, a program written in SI for ZX will indeed work more slowly. But! What's right for ZX isn't always right for PC! Let's say some super-brained hardware guy manages to overclock the ZX to 300 Mhz. I understand that this is impossible, but- let's say! And you believe that a similar program running this ZX will run at the same speed on a PC Celeron 300 MHz? Funny! On PC it will work 5 times faster and even 8 timesif the SI version of the program is launched on the PC! Why? I'll explain. The structure of the PC processor is _VERY_ different from the structure of the ZX processor. It's not even that PC the processor works with registers of 8...64 bits and has an average 6 times larger instruction set (new processors are equipped with additional instructions approximately once a year, so It is inappropriate to give this figure at all). But what difference? Here's an example: asm ZX: ld a,20 ld de,40000 asm PC: mov al,20 mov dx,4000 These are similar programs for PC and ZX, written in assembler. Or rather, not programs, but elements of programs. So, What is the speed of the programs? ZX = 15 cycles. PC = 1 clock cycle! Strange? Not at all. On a PC there are two instructions that are not related to each other in no way executed in one clock cycle! When compiling SI you can force the program to be compiled in such a way that As a result, the teams were arranged exactly this way - for increasing performance. Imagine a programmer writing on a PC,which, in the process of writing assembly language program, in addition to thinking about the program algorithm, also At the same time, he is engaged in arranging teams! Stupid? Of course! Not Is it easier to put all this into SI and let this process happen? automatically? But PC is a master! Frankly, at first coming to the PC, I also stubbornly, with Spectromovsky conviction, I tried to write programs in assembler. So what's the result? Slow programs! Did you expect anything different? But this is only one side of the problem. After all, on a PC there is such a thing as a cache. B in the established understanding of a real spektrumist, cache is optional ROM. Hm. And in the understanding of the pisishnik, cache is RAM, access to which is comparable to the speed of access to registers processor - the fastest memory in a computer (true for both PC and ZX). That is, in the process the work of the percent loads part of the program 'into itself' (for example - sprite) and works with it as a register. Maximum speed! So on PC, of course, the cache size is limited. I imagine a programmer writing a program in assembler and at the same time counting on a calculator, when this very cache will run out and when should it be given (!) to the processor instructions to load data into the cache from another address! It's not easier let the SI itself calculate when it endscache? Of course this is wrong! After all, ASM rules! So guys stop it you all this nonsense about the coolness of platforms and remember - in the world processors with ZX architecture are no longer produced - the most the minimum that is available is RISK processors - the following generation of processors after ZX. And even in washing machines Nowadays the processors are at least 2 times cooler than the ZX. And not because it is necessary. Or necessary. But just 'tube' processors are much more expensive!
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