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From: wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu (Pierce T. Wetter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac C Compilers, Benchmarks, Stupidity
Message-ID: <3592@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Wed, 12-Aug-87 03:35:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.3592
Posted: Wed Aug 12 03:35:18 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Aug-87 02:01:05 EDT
References: <3560@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu
Reply-To: wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Pierce T. Wetter)
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Organization: California Institute of Technology
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In article <3560@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> newton@cit-vax.UUCP (Mike Newton) writes:
>
>
>Probably like a lot of Mac II buyers, when I saw the latest issue of Byte,
>I was very disappointed.  The article causing this disapointment was the
>one comparing the Mac II vs. the 80386 based PS2/80. First I was
>disappointed in the article -- I could not tell which compilers were being
>used (I may have just not read the article carefully).  From a lot of
>experience programming the 8086 and the 68020, I was shocked.  The 68020
>__should__ be a faster system, and like a lot of these tests, this seemed
>to be more of a comparison of compilers than machines.  (I can provide a
>couple of references (some good, some bad) on this.  One of them is an IEEE
>article.)
>
>My first reaction was that there might be some mistake.  So, I ported the
>Dhrystone benchmark from Unix to the mac (ie: I changed the calls to the
>timer routines and nothing else), and compiled it under MPW C (the Green
>Hills Compiler).  At least the MPW compiler produced better code than the
>compiler used in the Byte article.  The benchmark clocked at 2777
>Dhrystones (faster than the Sun-3/52 with the Sun 3.2 cc -O!).
>
   
     The MPW C compiler did NOT until just recently, procduce 68020 code. The
MPW Pascal compiler did. The byte articles probably compared Pascal to C (which
is really unfair since the 68xxx series instruction set looks a lot like C) or
compiled code on a compiler not built for that microprocessor. The only way to
be sure your code comparisons are accurate or even meaningful is to get MPW 2.0
(yes thats 2.0 not 2.0b3 or 2.0d or even 2.1d1, 2.0) and try the following 
command ( c -mc68020 -mc68881 -elems foo.c )  That should give you the fastest
possible benchmarks.
    Pierce Wetter
  Apple Forever!!!!!!!!!!

		(to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
Scratch the disks, dump the core,	Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor,	Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash.	And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits.		Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits		Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash.	And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found			Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down,		And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash.	And the tape drives will crumble
						in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun,			When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run			Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash.	The system is going to crash.

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wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu

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