Exactly how XDR performs depends, of course, on the complexity of
the data. In a simple case of an array of integers, where each integer has to
be converted from one byte order to another, an average of three instructions
are required for each byte, meaning that converting the whole array
is likely to be limited by the memory bandwidth of the machine. More
complex conversions that require significantly more instructions per byte
will be CPU limited and thus performat a data rate less than the memory
bandwidth.