[MUD-Dev] Re: PDMud (was Re: Bruce Sterling on Virtual Community goals)

[Chris Gray <cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA>]

[Darrin Hyrup:]

 >>Want the truth?  Well written softcode servers are entirely capable of
 >>outperforming moderately well written hardcoded servers.  
 >
 >Hmm... I disagree.  Take, for example, Chris Grey's posts about the
 >efficiency of his mud language.  Its the fastest I've seen, and its still
 >12x slower than native code.

Yep, that was my best-case. However, that was on either a fractal
terrain generator or a fake Towers of Hanoi. Both are 100% integer
operations. No strings, *very* minimal database references, no floating
point, no communication. Just integer cranking. That type of stuff shows
the *most* slowdown from native code. MUD code that does a lot of
database references and string operations will show much less difference
between native code and byte-code (or any other reasonably efficient
interpretation scheme.)

In a previous post, I was saying much the same as JC is saying above.
A couple of months ago, I recall posting some results indicating that
my server on this 300Mhz Pentium-II looked to be able to handle around
500 users **ignoring network communication**. It is the communication
that I think is the real cost.

-- 
Chris Gray     cg#ami-cg,GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA