Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!lfcs!nick From: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer Subject: Re: Transputer Benchmarks Message-ID: <1000@etive.ed.ac.uk> Date: 22 Nov 88 14:53:48 GMT References: <1389@thumper.bellcore.com> <22@microsoft.UUCP> <228@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP> Sender: news@etive.ed.ac.uk Reply-To: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U Lines: 34 In article <228@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP> jevans@.ucalgary.ca (David Jevans) writes: >Several articles have compared the Transputer to 68000s >(SUN 3s) and VAX 780s. I had got similar results when >testing some T800s with a beta C compiler (the developer >of which shall remain nameless). Needless to say I was >less than impressed. About 2 months ago I got ahold of >another demo board and a Logical Systems C compiler >(from CSA). My ray tracer, which is very cpu and >floating point intensive, ran 25 times faster than >with the other vendors C compiler. The execution >time was equal to that of a SUN 4! > >This just goes to show you that while hardware may be >the same, the compiler can make all the difference. I view this as a non-sequitur. You don't say whether the second board was identical to the first - same clock speed and so on? I very much doubt that the compiler has much to do with it, but it's probably the run-time support (the floating point package, or whatever); perhaps your first version was running with floating point emulation rather than using the hardware? Perhaps your second version was configured to use the on-chip RAM for stack space? Perhaps a lot of things... :-) Disclaimer: I don't know much about transputer hardware systems, but I have programmed transputers and know something about compilers. >David Jevans, U of Calgary Computer Science, Calgary AB T2N 1N4 Canada >uucp: ...{ubc-cs,utai,alberta}!calgary!jevans Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ...while the builders of the cages sleep with bullets, bars and stone, they do not see your road to freedom that you build with flesh and bone.