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Path: utzoo!watmath!wateng!broehl
From: broehl@wateng.UUCP (Bernie Roehl)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: M68000 vs. 8086/iAPX 286
Message-ID: <1004@wateng.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-May-84 14:56:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: wateng.1004
Posted: Fri May 18 14:56:16 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 19-May-84 00:26:10 EDT
References: <253@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 18


All this concern with benchmarks is fine and good, but one important factor
is being overlooked: Very few applications for 16-bit processors are written
in assembler.  This means that the practical performance of most of these
processors is determined not so much by their architecture and design, but
rather by the efficiency of the high-level languages available for them.

Now, it can be argued that the two are interelated (i.e. that processors with
more "advanced" architectures will be easier to write good compilers for).
However, experience has shown that this isn't always true; far (FAR!) more
effort has been expended to date developing software for the 8086-family
processors that for the more powerful M68000 or NS16000 chips.  Thus for
most everyday applications, the practical performance of the 8086 systems
tends to be greater (which is how Intel and others can get such good results
in most benchmarks; they just use programs written in Basic or Pascal, for
which there are some quite good 8086 implementations).
-- 
        -Bernie Roehl    (University of Waterloo)