🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <jragosta-2703960819210001@ppp-2016.dca.net> jragosta@dca.net (Joe Ragosta) writes:
>In article <4j96jp$m7r@news.erie.net>, pce@moose.erie.net (Paul
>Christenson) wrote:
>
>> When are people going to learn that you can't directly compare benchmarks 
>> across platforms?  Especially when the different systems use different 
>> processor families?
>> 
>> For instance, Linux comes up with a "BogoMIPS" rating on bootup.  It's an
>> indication of how fast Linux did some timing loops.  One friend's 486DX4-100
>> has a BogoMIPS rating of 50.  Another friend's Pentium-133 also has a 
>> BogoMIPS rating of 50.  Does that mean that the two machines are the same
>> speed?  Of course not.
>> 
>> A friend of mine compiled up the BogoMIPS-determining code on a high end
>> SGI machine.  The machine is overall about 10x faster than the DX4-100, 
>> yet its rating was LOWER than that of the DX4.
>> 
>> Bottom line...  Benchmarks are useless between different platforms.
>
GEE, maybe you are right!  I WAS thinking about putting MY benchmark on the 
net.  It breaks things down into 9 catagories, rather than one neat number.

loops
32bit int
double
term I/O
reads from disk cache
random writes
random reads
sequential writes
sequential reads

Each catagory, on my P5 has a maximum error rate of +-4%.  Because it does each
for a given time, it will run on VERY fast systems, or the slowest system I have
ever heard of.

OF COURSE, the disk cache COULD be cache memory, and the disk COULD be very
fragmented or clean, and the compiler has a lot to do with other measurements,
etc.....  But if one computer does 3 million loops, and another does 2 million,
the first is almost SURELY faster than the second, and it CERTAINLY is when 
using the same compiler.

SO, benchmarks aren't ENTIRELY useless.  SURE, they're not perfect, but they
are better than subjective measurements.

Steve