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From: john@hopf.math.nwu.edu (John Franks)
Newsgroups: comp.benchmarks
Subject: Re: bc results (Coherent slams an IBM 3090)
Keywords: Beat this...I beat it
Message-ID: <1721@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 7 Dec 90 04:55:30 GMT
References: <1990Dec6.133344.2544@cs.utk.edu> <3083@uc.msc.umn.edu> <1990Dec6.230423.13969@cbnewsk.att.com>
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Reply-To: john@hopf.math.nwu.edu (John Franks)
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In article <1990Dec6.230423.13969@cbnewsk.att.com> lih@cbnewsk.att.com (andrew.a.lih) writes:
>In article <3083@uc.msc.umn.edu>, ken@ab.msc.umn.edu (Ken Chin-Purcell) writes:
>> An IBM 3090 600 Model J, running AIX MP:
>>
>> World's fastest 'bc' machine?
>
>Not quite, my AT&T 6386/25Mhz running Coherent wallops it:
>
>	Real: 	0.3
>	User:	0.1
>	Sys:	0.1
>	
>Anyone care to explain this?  My guess is that Mark Williams Co.
>who puts out Coherent really tweaked something!  Results for
>2.1^5000/2^5000 were quick as well:

[Coherent bc over 10 times as fast as AT&T version on same hardware]

>	
>Andrew Lih
>AT&T Bell Laboratories
>(lih@probe.att.com)

Coherent is a Version 7 clone reverse engineered from scratch almost
ten years ago (anyway I seem to recall it predates IBM PCs -- it ran
originally on PDP 11s).  Internally the bc program bears no relation to
the real UNIX version.  The Coherent version was written by Henry
Cejtin who went on to become one of the authors of Mathematica (he
recently has left Wolfram Inc.)  The explanation for the benchmark
result above is simple. Cejtin's bc is much better than the original or
whatever version AT&T is using now!

This is a fairly dramatic demonstration that various programs which
happen to share the name "bc" and the functionality of a calculator
don't necessarily make good benchmarks.


John Franks 	Dept of Math. Northwestern University
		john@math.nwu.edu