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From: emg@Metaphor.COM (Mike Greenawalt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: How many MIPS is a Mac?
Message-ID: <498@cronos.metaphor.com>
Date: 21 Feb 91 18:22:42 GMT
References: <1991Feb18.160733.20724@macc.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@cronos.metaphor.com
Reply-To: emg@Metaphor.COM (Mike Greenawalt)
Organization: m4
Lines: 58

In article <1991Feb18.160733.20724@macc.wisc.edu>, dhoyman@vms.macc.wisc.edu writes:

... some material deleted ...

|> With this in mind, allow me to post some Dhyrstone timings I have obtained
|> on various machines.  I used the Dhystone 1.1 written in C.  On the Mac I 
|> built a single version with Think C.  On Dos I used Turbo C.  On the Unix/Vms
|> systems I used the vendor's C.
|> 
|> Computer	O/S	Dhrystones/sec
|> 		
|> 
|> Cray Y-MP	UNICOS	16000
|> Zentith 386 33Mz	MS-DOS	8333
|> Gateway 386 33Mz	MS-DOS	8333
|> VAX 6420	VMS	7149
|> Mac IIci	Macintosh	7145
|> Sequent	Unix	3699
|> Mac IIcx	Macintosh	3500
|> VAX 3200	VMS	2941
|> Mac II	Macintosh	2777
|> AT&T 6386	MS-DOS	2631
|> AT&T 3B2 600	Unix System V	1785
|> MicroVAX II	Ultrix	1077
|> Mac SE	Macintosh	877
|> VAXstation II	VMS	862
|> Mac Plus	Macintosh	735
|> Zenith 8086 10Mz	MS-DOS	476
|> 

... some material deleted ...

|> Dirk Herr-Hoyman
|> UW-Madison, Dept. of Family Medicine and Practice
|> dhoyman@fammed.wisc.edu
|> 608-262-6368

There is something wrong with these numbers.  Recent experience with some
RISC processors give Dhrystone numbers in the 30000+ range.  These seem too
small to me.

But, I don't want to fuel a long controversy over Dhrystone numbers.  A few
years ago I was involved in a project to get the best Dhrystone numbers out
of a newly-designed architecture.  Deep study of the Dhrystone code and the
factors which influence its performance revealed that nothing counted more 
than the performance of the strcpy routine in the C library (unless the 
compiler could recognize and in-line the string moves).  Dhrystone really
measures moving characters around.  Maybe that is why the Cray number seems
relatively low.

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