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From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Towards A Meaningful Performance Measure
Message-ID: <7786@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Nov-87 08:37:16 EST
Article-I.D.: steinmet.7786
Posted: Fri Nov  6 08:37:16 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 16:52:53 EST
References: <861@winchester.UUCP> <2993@phri.UUCP> <864@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <3907@sol.ARPA> <881@mips.UUCP> <3113@husc6.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 28
Keywords: benchmarks

In article <3113@husc6.UUCP> reiter@harvard.UUCP (Ehud Reiter) writes:
|The problem with MIPS is that attempts to measure "integer crunching"
|performance, and
|
|	(a)   It is impossible to summarize "integer crunching" performance
|in one number.
|	(b)   In any case, not many customers care about integer crunching
|performance.

Here I don't feel that you are correct... machine usage seems to fall
into two categories of user, the "number crunchers" who need f.p.
performance, and the rest of the software development, word processing,
E-mail, record keeping world. The speed of integer arithmetic is *very*
important to most groups.

One of the things I have noted in my own benchmarking is that the one
thing which best predicts the performance overall is the integer test
and branch time (usual disclamers about no one number), and that
machines which do well in "transient response" are more pleasant to use.
Transient response is the time to do little things, like ls, cat, etc.
The RT/PC scored very well on that, and even though it was not
competitive with a Sun overall, it was more pleasant to use.

<<<< all my own opinions >>>>
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me