SPARC assembler takes a LONG time

[Jim Harkins]

In article <3399 at brchh104.bnr.ca> you write:
>Assembling a SPARC assembly file that is 8 Meg long takes several hours
>of clock time (around 40 minutes of CPU time) and needs 72 Meg of virtual
>space (of which only 3-6 Meg are resident at any time).  The assembly runs
>fast at first (using >80 % of cpu cycles), but slows to a trickle ( <10% of
>cpu cycles) after about 20 cpu minutes, on an otherwise unloaded machine.
>Is it thrashing?  How in the name of ?$%&! can an assembler thrash?  This is
>running under cc on a SPARCstation 1+ with 40 Meg internal memory and 150 Meg
>swap space.

First, why is your file 8 Meg long?  How do you edit the turkey??  To answer
the question, the way priorities work in UNIX is the longer a process runs
the lower it's priority.  As you may or may not know, when UNIX runs a process
it runs it in pieces (thats why it's called multitasking).  Lets say your
priority was 1.  The second time it gets CPU time it will have a priority of
2, the third time a priority of 4, the fourth time a priority of 16, etc.
This keeps CPU intensive tasks from hogging the CPU and gives other people a
chance.  Obviously, after 20 minutes of CPU time your priority is somewhat
less than the idle loop.

jim