Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!winchester!mash
From: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: SPARC vs MC68040
Message-ID: <35825@mips.mips.COM>
Date: 12 Feb 90 00:42:55 GMT
References: <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU> <5190@convex.convex.com> <1850@cbnewsi.ATT.COM> <2938@oakhill.UUCP> <3085@rtmvax.UUCP>
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Reply-To: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey)
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In article <3085@rtmvax.UUCP> wbeebe@rtmvax.UUCP (Bill Beebe) writes:
>In article <2938@oakhill.UUCP> davet@oakhill.UUCP (David Trissel) writes:
>>
>>The fastest Dhrystone 2.1 I have seen reported for SPARC (obtained from the 
>>report file delivered with the 4/89 Usenet distribution of the benchmark) is 
>>23,148 KDhrys. The MC68040 runs that benchmark at twice the speed.
>>
>> -- Dave Trissel - Motorola Semiconductor, Austin Texas
>
>Protestations aside, nothing will lend truth to the Moto numbers until some
>independant non-Moto numbers come back from *real* working silicon and
>systems. To re-quote a very tired old paraphrase, "there are lies, damn
>lies, and then there are vendor benchmarks". I am intriqued by Heurikon's
>(please forgive the spelling) 25 Mhz 68040 VME card in which they claim
>only 14 or so VAX mips. Questions: what is the correspondance between VAX
>mips and 040 mips (is it 1:1?); what board level architecture did Heurikon
>use on their board?
>
>Something else that's interesting. In the February 7th Microprocessor
>Report, page 4, under new SPEC numbers, a Moto system with a 33 Mhz 88K came
>up with a 17.8 SPECmark. Congratulations. However, the article goes on to
>note that the 88K SPECmark was only 1% over the SPARC's 17.6 SPECmark (as
>well as the MIPS). I would be most interested to see SPECmarks for the
>Heurikon board (or any other system) running the 040 at 25 Mhz or even 33
>Mhz.

A bunch of people at various companies are busily stuffing SPEC numbers into
spreadsheets, plus published mips-ratings, and analyzing.  I'm also trying
to calibrate i486 and 68040 numbers into this scheme.

NOTE: regarding Dhrystone:
	a) A bunch of Motorola people have been working hard along with the
	rest of the SPECers to get better benchmarks, and have started getting
	good compiler gains by analyzing real programs.
	Talking about Dhrystone is a step backwards...
	b) In this newsgroup has been discussed many times why one has to
	be careful with Dhrystone ratings.  Also, I quote from the author's
	directions:
"In any case, for serious performance evaluation, users are  advised  to
ask  for  code listings and to check them carefully."
	EVERYBODY knows that inlining strcpy&strcmp can boost the number
	strongly without giving anything like that boost on real programs.
	SO POST THE CODE WHERE THE CRUCIAL STRCPY/STRCMP calls are made;
	otherwise, the number is simply meaningless, because anybody can
	boost the performance substantially on Dhrystone by an optimization
	that has relatively little effect on real programs.
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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