[sugar] Performance

[Greg Smith]

Hi Guys,

I need short term options and longer terms options.

What do we know already?

Where are the bottle necks and how much work would it be to improve them?

Stability is key and we're not going to sacrifice that for 8.2.0. 
Regardless we need scoping on performance improvement options and then 
we can pick an appropriate time frame and balance that against other 
priorities.

Get me started with what we have already discovered, if anything.

Thanks,

Greg S


Walter Bender wrote:
> +1 to Marc's comment as well, that was posted while I was writing mine.
> 
> -walter
> 
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:39 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am steadfast in the opinion that stability and predictability are
>> much more important goals for 8.2 than trying to make significant
>> speed improvements. Also, do you know what build Miguel was basing his
>> assessment on?
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 6:16 AM, Greg Smith <gregsmitholpc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I just got word from a decision maker that they are very
>>> concerned about "performance". They say that Sugar is slow. I'm probing
>>> to get more details but I want to evaluate the options in parallel.
>>>
>>> Focus is on improving this in 8.2.0.
>>>
>>> Here are the areas I can think of:
>>> - Activity launch time
>>> I know we had some threads on this but I don't know where we stand. Can
>>> I get an update and an evaluation of what it will take to greatly
>>> improve this?
>>>
>>> - File/activity open
>>> Can we improve this? A piece of the latency here may be due to a large
>>> Journal being much slower. Can we "chunk" journal reads or otherwise
>>> improve the speed of opening files? Can we speed up journal access in
>>> its own GUI too?
>>>
>>> - File save
>>> What is the bottle neck on save? Let's create a test case for this.
>>>
>>> - Task switching
>>> I've seen some threads on this. Can someone summarize it and give me a
>>> hard number to show how we have improved?
>>>
>>> - Activity or main GUI responsiveness to cursor
>>> It seems to me that the activities are a little slow. e.g. when I try to
>>> draw a line in paint, it takes a little while (maybe 100s of ms but
>>> noticeable) for the line to show on the screen. Similar with cursor
>>> placement in write or in the journal/home. Has anyone else noticed that?
>>> Is that due to CPU cycles or screen refresh or something else?
>>>
>>> - Hardware
>>> Can anyone evaluate how much faster it would be with twice the RAM? Is
>>> the NAND slowing us down?
>>>
>>> This may cost us significantly if we don't show improvement. Send me
>>> ideas. Any quick wins would be considered, even if they have a downside
>>> in another metric.
>>>
>>> I'll come back with more details on their specific concerns as soon as I
>>> get it.
>>>
>>> BTW this was raised by the kids in their blog several months ago. See
>>> the first link here:
>>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/9.1.0#Unadorned_and_unedited_user_feedback
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Greg S
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>