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We are using 8.05a of the CX51 compiler. Our program is over 300K long. The compiler times are getting rather long. About 2 minutes. Can the compiler make use of a dual processor to speed up compiling? What is the recommended computer to use? I realize that more RAM helps but after so much it may be irrelevant.
300K size??? what are you doing with that much of size?
May be some problem with OS. May be some virus. Clean Install your OS then check again.
2 minutes? - Luxury!!
When I were a lad, we used to dream o' getting a single file compiled in 2 minutes - let alone a complete build!
Everything, you know projects, they love to add stuff. We are using an NXP (Philips) P87C51MC2 in external mode. This allows up to 8meg ram and 8 meg code.
The Keil linker does a lot more work than a typical linker. It has a lot of overlay analysis and whole-program optimizations. And it does seem to have a steep growth curve with the size of the program, definitely not linear or even n log n.
I don't think the Keil tools are multithreaded. Still, a dual core makes the system a lot more responsive. When we changed from a 2.8G single core P4 system to a 3.0G Core Duo, the "build all" time for our project dropped from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. The machine also has a faster disk (10k RPM vice 5400, larger buffer).
Haven't tried on a quad core.