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Subject: Re: How many MIPS is the Mac?
Message-ID: <1991Feb16.160555.15111@linus.mitre.org>
Date: 16 Feb 91 16:05:55 GMT
References: <1991Feb16.025224.25758@cs.uoregon.edu>
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In article <1991Feb16.025224.25758@cs.uoregon.edu> mkelly@cs.uoregon.edu 
(Michael A. Kelly) writes:
> How many MIPS is the Mac capable of?  I see ads for workstations such as 
the
> SPARCs which say they run at 12 or 26 MIPS, and I think 'but how does 
that
> compare to my Mac IIcx?'

I am not an expert in this area but have looked in to it a little. You may 
be aware of the program
Speedometer for the mac which is available on sumex. I have used this 
program to benchmark several of our machines here. The program provides , 
among other things, KWhetstones/sec and Dhrystones/sec. Using a spec I 
heard concerning a basic DEC machine that 1750 Dhrystones==1MIP, I have 
calculated the corresponding MIPs on the Macs. You may be a little 
dissapointed with your IIcx in comparison to 26 MIP workstation.

            MacIIcx                            MacIIci                     
        MacIIfx
----------------------------------------------------
3816Dhry=2.18MIP      5791Dhry=3.31MIP     11029Dhry=6.3MIP


   I make no claim as to the validity of these numbers, this is just what 
I got. There is alot of
debate concerning these benchmarks (see comp.sys.benchmark - mostly 
workstations though). From platform to platform there is compiler 
variability and instruction efficiency (i.e., one function may do the work 
of two) etc.
   As a note, I understand that the Dhrystone benchmark is register and 
memory intensive where as the Whetstone is math/FPU intensive. The math 
performance on the Mac seems fairly good to me when the FPU is utilized. 
As always, I would be interested in corrections , comparisons and comments.
 
-GSM

gmarzot@linus.mitre.org