From: Thomas Martitz <thomas.martitz_at_student.htw-berlin.de>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:20:24 +0200

So, I today decided to experiment with a newer gcc/binutils version. My
results are very much better than the previous tests.


For reference, the last tests were discussed here:
http://www.rockbox.org/mail/archive/rockbox-dev-archive-2009-02/0069.shtml
http://www.rockbox.org/mail/archive/rockbox-dev-archive-2009-03/0160.shtml

In details:
My sytem:
gcc: arm-elf-gcc (GCC) 4.4.1 (<latest release)
ld: GNU ar (GNU Binutils) 2.20.51.20090910 (< today's snapshot)
Host gcc: gcc (Debian 4.4.1-1) 4.4.1
Host system: Linux

In contrast to the previous test, this time everything seems to run. AAC
now runs also, but I didn't test WMA (both didn't work in the last test).
The changes needed to build rockbox are very minimal, removing the
memcpy wrapper in rockdoom.c is enough. The rest builds fine, although
there are a few (I think minor) warnings.

On my e200:
Binsize and RAM usage are *down* by 10k each.
Codecs:
[codec] -- [4.0.3: %rt/MHz needed for rt] -- [4.4.1: %rt/MHz needed for rt]
mp3 -- 381.27%/20.98 -- 382.84%/20.89
aac -- 223.06/35.86 -- 219.01%/36.52
vorbis -- 281.06%/28.46 -- 275.01%/29.07
flac 632.50%/12.64 -- 554.01%/14.44

While the binsize goes down quite nicely and my tested codecs (except
flac) don't differ much in their performance, flac is for some reason
noticeably slower.


At least rockbox builds and runs (apparently) fine with this combo again
which is a major improvement over older combos. But what it gives us is
not worth changing our standard toolchain I think. Let's hope for gcc
4.4.2 or binutils 2.20(.1) :)

Best regards
Received on 2009-09-10