🚀 go-pugleaf

Date: Thu 14 Jun 84 10:49:29-PDT
From: Malcolm B. Brown <uw-beaver!MBBROWN@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: More comparative benchmarking
To: INFO-MAC@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA


The following are the results of some benchmarking I have done.
Since the only language that is common to all the computers in
question is BASIC, I used BASIC programs.  I took them from the April
issue of BYTE, where they were used to test Apple's BASIC for the
Mac.  Each program (except for the sieve) repeated some function
5,000 times.  The programs included:

      Loop  (empty for/next loop)
      GOSUB (GOing to an empty subroutine)
      Midstring search
      Integer division
      Real division
      Eratosthenes sieve for the first 1,899 prime numbers


In cases were I ran the tests myself, I ran the programs twice and
averaged the times.

Times for the Macintosh with Apple's MacBASIC are given according
to the results listed in the BYTE article, page 328.


Here are the results (time given in seconds):

        IBM PC     HP150     Macintosh    Macintosh   HP9816
         8088       8088      68000         68000      68000
        (4.7MHz)   (8MHz)     (8 MHz)      (8MHz)     (8MHz)
        MS BASIC   MS BASIC   MacBASIC     MS BASIC   HP BASIC 2.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

LOOP       6          6          1.5          5         .82

GOSUB      12        11.5        3            9        1.5

Midstring  24.5      20          9           22        2.45

Int div    22        17          3           15        3.04

Real  div  20        17         18*          32        3.15

Sieve      3:44      3:12       31.5        grrf**    16.5


* N.B. For the MS BASIC programs, I used double precision division
  (R#=S#/3#).

grrf***   MS BASIC on the Mac ran out of memory when the sieve program
       tried to DIM an array of over 8,000 elements! The largest
       array I could construct was 6,770 elements. This enabled the
       program to find the first 1,602 primes and accomplished this
       with an average run time of 1:44.


               --- Malcolm Brown

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