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From: jru@etn-rad.UUCP (John Unekis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Intel Microprocessors
Message-ID: <257@etn-rad.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: etn-rad.257
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 05:41:00 EDT
References: <1112@lznv.ATT.COM> <399@aucs.UUCP> <3225@cucca.columbia.edu> <789@unccvax.UUCP> <1924@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> <138@tscs.UUCP> <7042@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Reply-To: jru@etn-rad.UUCP (0000-John Unekis)
Organization: Eaton Inc. IMSD, Westlake Village, CA
Lines: 56

In article <7042@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>....
>I will quote some figures from Byte magazine, July 1987 issue. I
>personally do not doubt the Intel benchmarks at all. If they chose to
>select benchmarks which show the best points of their product, can you
>...
>test		68010	68020	68020	80386
>		7.8MHz	16MHz	12.5MHz	16MHz
>		1w/s	1w/s	0w/s	0.5w/s
>		--	881@8	881@12	287@16
>
>Fibonacci	 264.0	  71.6	  70.2	   3.1	time in sec
>Float		 230.0	   4.2	   2.9	   5.4
>Sieve		  64.7	  14.9	  12.8	   6.0
>Sort		 111.3	  19.8	  12.6	   9.7
>Savage		1884.3	   8.8	  24.8	  35.1
>
>Whetstones	 574.0	2114.0	2702.0	3703.7	whetstones / sec
>
...
first off - those were dhrystones, not whetstones, one is an integer test,
the other is floating point.

       I notice that you conveniently forgot the worst 
       Intel column
	 80286
	 8Mhz
	 1w/s
	 ----
Fib       950
Float     116.36
Seive     26.71
Sort      46.53
Savage    1103.0

 FLAME ON!!!----

I thought that the results of these tests looked particularly bogus,
so I looked up the BYTE magazine article to see what was going on.
The most obvious discrepancy was in the fibonacci sequence routine, so 
I typed in their code verbatim and ran it on two machines for comparison.

On a Motorola 68020 with 68881 at 12 Mhz the test ran in 69.1 seconds
On an Intel 80386/80287 in full 32 bit mode at 16Mhz it ran in 60.3 seconds
(Both systems had 1w/s memory and ran UNIX V)
Even with a 25% clock speed advantage the Intel processor was only ~12%
faster.
The machine used in the Byte article must either have been a Gallium Arsenide,
100Mhz custom chip, or the authors are guilty of a gross clerical error.
Perhaps they forgot to read the minute portion of the time on their stop
watch.

I would hate to impugn the reputation of a Magazine like BYTE by suggesting
that they would publish a test where the results were deliberatley falsified,
but it is true that the best way to make INTEL look better than Motorola
is to LIE.