🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <342@ames.UUCP> eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene Miya N.) writes:
>From: Dick Dunn <ames!ico.ISC.COM!rcd>
>>a measure of a complete system--CPU, bus, memory/cache, compiler, and even OS
>>to the extent that it might intrude (hopefully little).  It's a lot better
>>than just raw CPU measurements.

There's another aspect to performance which is not mentioned above, and that's
quality of the application software.  I realize this is straying pretty far
from computer architecture, but from the end-user's point of view, one of the
most important determiners of how fast his system runs is how well his
application software is written.  A user might well prefer a "slow" machine
with "fast" software, and a vendor might be well advised to spend more money
improving the speed of commonly used programs like editors and text processors,
and less money improving the speed of his cache.

To take one small example, the VAX/VMS text processor, RUNOFF, is 5-10 times
faster than NROFF on the same hardware (it's true that the functionality
of the programs is different, but from my point of view they're equivalent,
since both are perfectly adequate for my needs), and the VAX/VMS editor EVE
is similarly much faster than EMACS (and again, both do what I want).  So,
as a user who seems to spend most of his time doing word processing these
days, I might well prefer a "1 MIPS" box which could run RUNOFF and EVE to
a "3 MIPS" box which ran NROFF and EMACS.

I do NOT want to get into arguments of VMS vs UNIX, RUNOFF vs NROFF, or
EMACS vs EVE.  The only point I'm trying to make is that the true performance
of a box depends on the available application software as well as on
CPU speed, cache size, compiler quality, etc.

					Ehud Reiter
					reiter@harvard  (APRA,UUCP,BITNET)