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From: doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: assembly v.s. HOL
Message-ID: <511@terak.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 15:19:33 EST
Article-I.D.: terak.511
Posted: Thu Apr 18 15:19:33 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Apr-85 06:47:19 EST
References: <1220@topaz.ARPA>
Organization: Terak Corporation, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 25

[the trap snaps shut...]

> software crisis is: the cost of hardware is steadily decreasing while
> the cost of software is steadily increasing).
> 
> Granted there are still a number of solution domains where size and
> speed are very important but these are becoming fewer and fewer by the
> day thanks to our friends in EE (256k and 1m memory chips, MC68020 size
> micros...).

I was wondering when someone was going to point out how today's faster
CPUs make up for the overhead of using an HLL.

I took that ol' Ackerman function and ran some benchmarks.  I compiled
it using VAX/UNIX 4.2BSD "cc -O" and ran it on our VAX 11/750.  To
compute "acker(3,6)" ten times required 62.2 seconds.  I then rewrote
it into Z-80 assembler.  The same computation takes 18.8 seconds on a
4 MHz Z-80A.  (Yes, it got the same answer: acker(3,6)=509).

So, moving up from a Z-80A to a VAX 11/750, the program only takes 3.3
times as long when coded in C.  Or looked at another way, the overhead
of using C code can bring a VAX down below the performance level of a
Timex/Sinclair 1000.
-- 
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug