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From: newton@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Mike Newton)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.org.usenix
Subject: Re: Benchmarking the 532, 68030, MIPS, 386...at a Usenix!
Message-ID: <2723@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Sun, 17-May-87 18:01:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.2723
Posted: Sun May 17 18:01:19 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 17-May-87 22:40:18 EDT
Reply-To: newton@cit-vax.UUCP (Mike Newton)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 35
Keywords: benchmarks, prolog, lisp, risc, kitchen sink
Summary: More Variety
Xref: mnetor comp.arch:1334 comp.org.usenix:185


	The list of benchmarks given seems to ignore several important 
cases.  One of these -- a large graphics program -- was pointed out by Tim Kay.

	Another thing that I would like to see bench marked is a large AI
program running through either a Lisp or Prolog compiler/interpreter.  I
personally use Prolog a lot -- and often take up running the naive reverse
benchmark on a version of C-Prolog that I have ported to many machines.
While licensing restrictions may prevent this at USENIX, the benchmark has
proved useful.  For example:
	[1] The C-Prolog interpreter was FASTER than the HP prolog
COMPILER on HP 9000/200 series machines!!  (The compiler did have many
nice features though...)
	[2] On many machines there exists a rough correspondance between
Dhrystone benchmarks and LIPS.  However, with increasing pipelines, this
may no longer be true.  Prolog uses LOTS of pointers.

	With micros capable of ``17 Million sustained MIPS'' it would 
probably be possible to write a Prolog compiler that got a fair fraction
of 1 million LIPS  (current systems on vaxen and suns get ~5000 LIPS
interpreted).  This claim of speed would be especailly true on machines
like the proposed AMD 29000 with 64 general use registers -- one of the
main things that slowed down the Prolog compiler I wrote the code generator
for on was the lack of registers on the IBM.  Our compiler ran at about
one million LIPS on a IBM 3090.  It would be a lot more economically
feasible for the average Prolog user to buy a microprocessor based
system than a 3090 :-) !

	Until that time a standard AI program could be:
[1] A mini-prolog interpreter running a parsing problem, or,
[2] xlisp 1.7? running a small program, or...??

- mike

newton@csvax.caltech.edu		818 356 6771 (afternoons, nights)
amdahl!cit-vax!newton			Caltech 256-80,  Pasadena CA  91125