Xref: utzoo comp.sys.dec:3944 comp.unix.sysv386:121 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!occrsh!uokmax!apple!usc!samsung!ernie.viewlogic.com!m2c!umvlsi!dime!dime.cs.umass.edu!moss From: moss@cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec,comp.unix.sysv386 Subject: Re: Whets.C benchmark VMS vs UNIX Message-ID: Date: 5 Sep 90 23:37:30 GMT References: <53@mq.UUCP> Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu Reply-To: moss@cs.umass.edu Followup-To: comp.sys.dec Organization: Dept of Comp and Info Sci, Univ of Mass (Amherst) Lines: 20 In-reply-to: alan@mq.UUCP's message of 5 Sep 90 00:41:36 GMT Sometimes this tells a lot more about a *compiler* than it tells about hardware. My guess is that the 80x86 compilers may not be as good at some fancy optimizations, whereas the DEC C compiler is pretty good. If you want to compare the hardware alone, code in assembly (but that does not give a fair comparison if your programming will be in C). Another thing to do is to use more similar compilers, e.g., the GNU C compielr, which I believe is available for both of these machines/OSs. I also agree with the other respondent that it is not necessarily a very informative benchmark; be very careful in this kind of comparison! I would also not call a 3 MIP (or so) VAX "low-end"; one VAX instruction can do a lot more than one 80x86 instruction in many cases, and workstation I/O and memory systems are perhaps better designed than PC class boxes (and mainframes even better than that, etc.). -- J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor Department of Computer and Information Science Lederle Graduate Research Center University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 (413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu