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From: gus@Shasta.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Processing Speed?
Message-ID: <17@Shasta.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 30-Jan-86 00:46:49 EST
Article-I.D.: Shasta.17
Posted: Thu Jan 30 00:46:49 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 03:44:43 EST
References: <106@eyelab.UUCP>
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 19

>     Now I realize that the 11/44 has floating point hardware
> and is in an entirely different class, but a 50 fold decrease in
> speed is a little hard to believe.  With the recent revelation
> of the Mac+ and its orientation toward increased size and not
> speed I think Apple may be forgetting those of us who want to
> crunch, not expand.

This is not at all unreasonable considering the double overhead of software
floating point and a trap interface vs direct fp hardware calls inline. I
hear
that Levco's Monster Mac has a 68881 buit-in and that Consulair is writing
a compiler that will directly support it. Do your benchmarks on that puppy!

Actually, a much better comparison might be to use a 16 or 32 bit integer
problem. In this case, the Mac should do a lot better.

Also, you might want to compare the accuracy you got with the PDP11 vs that
of the Mac. Nobody claimed that SANE or any other software floating point
was fast, but Apple does boast its accuracy.