Benchmarks

In September 2003 we benchmarked Athene's graphics throughput performance for the commercial and VESA graphics drivers against Microsoft Windows and Linux/X11. Graphics throughput is the most significant display bottleneck for applications. For programs like movie players and desktop games that spend every split-second copying graphics to your display, high graphics throughput is essential for a smooth and uninterrupted viewing experience.

Athene has achieved a high degree of performance in this area because a) the rendering system was designed for quality graphics throughput; b) applications have direct access to the video display; c) we used the best optimised code techniques that we could write for fast graphics transfer. The following benchmark table illustrates the speed at which 100 800x600x32 images can be be copied to the video display (tested on the same machine with the Windows, X11 and native versions of Athene):

OS / Release Time (sec) Speed Difference Blit Function

Athene 4.0 1.162 0% BlitArea()

Windows 2000 1.392 -17% SetDIBitsToDevice()

X11 + XShmImage 1.621 -29% XShmPutImage()

X11 3.437 -296% XPutImage()

Athene's native graphics system tops the benchmark easily with its modern technology. The X11 graphics system is quite slow in comparison to the native version of Athene, and gets 3x worse if you give consideration to prgrams that aren't using MIT's XShmImage extension. X11's disadvantage is caused to its client/server design, which causes additional overhead in comparison to the local graphics calls as used in the Windows and Athene display systems.

Other Advantages

Athene also uses shared graphics buffers so that applications are not reliant on the operating system when the interface needs to be redrawn. This speeds up window dragging and resizing considerably, as the interface does not have to wait for applications to redraw their windows when they are exposed. Graphics buffers also ensure that you never get flickering graphics in the display.