Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 17 Feb 2000 17:10:38 +0100 | From | Manfred Spraul <> | Subject | Re: Subject: Re: success on 386 (was: Re: Does anybody try to compile...) |
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Alan Cox wrote: > > > I agree that the issue is mostly size, not speed. What makes X large isn't > > primarily the video drivers, it is the whole framework (server, xlib, toolkit, > > wm). The core of Windows 3.1/9x is most if not all hand-written assembler > > that is very tight. X is just much larger. > > Im told the core of win9x is mostly C++ . >
I don't know about the new features in Win98 [usb, wdm, directX], but Windows 95 contains large parts in either asm or 16-bit code.
* ring0 kernel: big parts asm. It's possible that the filesystem code is written in C/C++. It's based on the Windows 3.1 VXD kernel, and that one was 100% asm. [Macro assember, e.g. there is a 300 lines function prologue macro,...] * ring3 kernel: 32-bit code, I assume C or C++. * window subsystem [user, gdi]: still in 16-bit code: IIRC I read in an article about windows 95 that Microsoft thought about rewriting that in 32-bit code, but that would have increased the memory requirements by nearly 1 MB, so they decided that this code remained 16-bit.
Most user space stuff should be 32-bit C++ [explorer, task manager, internet explorer,...]
-- Manfred
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