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From: manson@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Manson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: MIPS Performance Brief, zillions of numbers, very long
Message-ID: <864@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Sun, 1-Nov-87 22:10:08 EST
Article-I.D.: tut.864
Posted: Sun Nov  1 22:10:08 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Nov-87 22:39:46 EST
References: <861@winchester.UUCP> <2993@phri.UUCP>
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer and Information Science
Lines: 34
Keywords: benchmarks

Alright, I'm a little pissed over the recent posting of these supposed
"performance figures". Exactly what are these things supposed to mean?
Well, they are compiled programs on different systems that are run and
supposed to represent the speed of the various processors, MIPS etc. We
all know that MIPS is mostly a meaningless figure (Okay, so there's some
debate there, but I see no meaning to how many instructions per second a
processor runs-"The COPYMEM instruction blockmoves the entire memory to
disk space, but takes 1,000,000 usec to execute, with an effective MIPS
of 1/1000000").  Plus let's say I write my own compiler for my new machine.
It has no optimizing and is real brain-damaged-it writes code like a Forth
machine (lots of stack ops). It means nothing to try to compare my computer
with my dumb compiler to a well-developed VAX machine with a real compiler.
So why run benchmarks in compiled languages??? It's easier that way, you
don't have to write individual programs for each machine that might actually
show off their abilities and improved instructions. I'll admit that it does
mean something for compiled language users but not really for performance
comparisons-you're comparing apples and oranges, or really the efficiency
of the compilers on the machines. 
If anyone has done any studies using machine language programs I'd be very
interested in that....
						Bob M.
...!ihnp4!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!manson
or
manson@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu

Disclamer:My employers don't care what I say....






-- 
Batches? We don't need no stinkin batches!