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From: krk@cs.purdue.EDU (Kevin Kuehl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: How many MIPS is a Mac?
Message-ID: <13486@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 18 Feb 91 18:14:22 GMT
References: <1991Feb18.160733.20724@macc.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU
Organization: Purdue Univserity Computer Science Department
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In article <1991Feb18.160733.20724@macc.wisc.edu> dhoyman@vms.macc.wisc.edu writes:
   While I would agree that one cannot compare MIPS directly, the Dhystone
   benchmark is often used as a measure of MIPS with the conversion factor
   of 1750 Dhrystone/s = 1 MIPS.

One thing no one has mentioned when comparing MIPs is that not all MIP
measurements are the same.  Some vendors use ``true'' MIPs which is
very misleading, especially for RISC architectures.  Others use Vax
MIPs where they run a piece of benchmark code on a machine and compare
it to the speed of a Vax 11/780.  If it runs the code 15 times faster
than the Vax, then the machine is declared to be 15 Vax MIPs.

But MIPs are pretty irrelevant.  Bus speed, memory speed, disk speed,
etc. all go into deciding how fast a machine is.

-- 
Kevin Kuehl
krk@cs.purdue.edu
kuehlkr@mentor.cc.purude.edu