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From: mjones@stdc01.UUCP (Michael Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.misc
Subject: Benchmarks from Hell
Keywords: RS/6000, i468, Enquirer
Message-ID: <631@stdc01.UUCP>
Date: 29 Aug 90 13:33:15 GMT
Organization: Star Technologies, Graphicon Products Division (RTP, N.C)
Lines: 34

I was browsing through a copy of "Unix World" last night while
my wife shopped for Greeting Cards. In the darkly-tinted "rumor
pages" section, I saw a bold caption (something like):

    "IBM RS/6000 Floating-Point Performance Overstated"

My eyes focused on the paragraph below. My heart raced. Had IBM 
lied about the RS/6000 FPU? Is the ATTACK OF THE KILLER MICROS
nothing more than an advertising campaign? 

(pause here to develop the right level of excitement)

The story gave a brief overview of RS/6000 performance measured 
by the Nelson benchmarks, including the following (paraphrased):

    ...Integer speed was comparable to the i468, but floating-
    point performance was less than the 486. Neal Nelson said 
    that "the floating-point benchmark was performed using the 
    Awk language, and perhaps IBM has a slower Awk than ..."

Aha! Slower when running _Awk_ floating-point code! AAAAARRGGH!
Perhaps they have recoded LINPAK in Awk? How can they publish
this kind of thing? Even though there are different audiences,
nobody deserves to be told that the RS/6000 is slow at FP code
because Awk can't turn n-Mflops. 

They went on to disclose that the full details of the complete
benchmark process will be published as a feature article in 
next month's issue. Some rumor this turned out to be. It was
a teaser for next month's zero-content article.
-- 
-- Michael T. Jones          Email:    ...!{uunet,mcnc}!rti!stdc01!mjones --
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