Getting the most for a process, restated.

[Doug Perlich]

I wrote:

>I have recently become interested in having an application program run 
>as fast as possible!  (Sound familiar)?
>What I am interested in is how can a program get a higher priority at 
>run time.  More exactly what other methods are there to get screaming
>performance out of a UNIX machine.
>I am mainly interested in a multi-user system.
 
	I got several good answers about optimization etc. that will be
helpfull (I really need to learn my compiler and optimization tools 
much better.)

	In my request I should have been more specific.  The system I'm 
working on is written in C, (thank God!), it consists of hundreds of 
programs driven by a menu program.  Most programs are file maintenace, 
listings, non-complex reports etc. but there are several processor and 
IO intensive programs (at least routines).  The system will be used on
a large UNIX system with many users.
	What I want is the ability to reserve some speed for the intensive
routines and programs at runtime.
	I suppose the OS will do quite well recognizing non-busy processes
for the most part.  I just want the extra push, something very much
like register variables are supposed to do, hint to the compiler that a
variable will be used intensively.  (By the way how well does that work?)
	Come to think of it register variables are almost exactly what
I need, I think.  Anything else I should look into?  (I know, RTFM!)

	By the way, thanks for all who have responded to my first 
posting, I am trying many of those methods.

-Doug.