Jasmine Strong wrote: [...]
Were you running gcc from flash, or from disc? If it's running from flash, I would expect that to be faster than (at least USB1) disc.
[...]
Compiling with -O3 -fomit-stack-frame also helps ARM a lot more than you might expect, since the optimizer can make serious gains there-
*nods*
Back then there was no flash driver, so everything was coming off the disk; and given that I was really doing it as a stunt, there was no special configuration done. If I ever figure out OpenEmbedded I might play with the compilation options --- that optimisation trick definitely sounds worth trying. (It may also be worth experimenting with using Thumb code. It's technically slower, but the higher code density might improve overall performance by reducing I/O.)
It's a shame building a Linux distro from scratch is such a pain... I *knew* we should have gone for BSD! [1]
(The new EABI stuff looks interesting, too.)
[1] That was a joke.