On Dec 22, 4:44, Ben Franchuk wrote:
> Richard Erlacher wrote:
> >
> > Let's leave compilers out of the equation. Even the same small-C
compiler,
> > targeted at the two quite different CPU's potentially represent a
significant
> > skew in favor of one or another of the two.
> >
> How can you have skew? That is the whole idea of benchmark is to
> compare
> two machines. I would expect that the simple C that was given would be a
> good test
> when judged with other benchmarks.
For a comparison of two development systems, maybe, but not for a simple
comparison of processors. You'll find that the compilers were written
differently for the different processors. As likely as not, one will be
better at certain things than another, or better on one processor.
For example, gcc does fairly poorly on a PDP-11 or an SGI machine (SGI's cc
will run rings round gcc for MIPS in almost every respect) yet works very
well on an x86 achitecture, because that's where the major development was
done. If you take a compiler written for one chip, say a Z80, a straight
port will produce poor code for a 6502 because you have to think about
things in a different way, and this will be more apparent with a simple
compiler than sophisticated one.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Sun Dec 23 2001 - 06:21:02 GMT