Rumour about IBM benchmarks

[Vic Abell]

In article <1233 at torsqnt.UUCP> david at torsqnt.UUCP (David Haynes) writes:
>I have heard a rumour that the benchmark results that IBM posted for
>their RS6000 system were the results of hand-coded, hand-optimized
>assembler coding rather than the result of compiling C or FORTRAN
>code. Can anyone confirm or deny this? 

Before we purchased a RISC System/6000 model 520, I ran my own versions of
the Linpack and Dhrystone tests.  I used straight C and Fortran code and
the ``-O'' compiler option.  My results confirm the figures published by
IBM.  If anything, the IBM benchmark results are conservatively stated.

			IBM's rating	My results

	MFLOPS		7.4 		7.55	[1]

	MIPS		27.5		29.4	[2]

[1] My rating comes from the average of ten runs of the unmodified Linpack
    program, matrix order 100, leading array dimension 201.  There was no
    difference between single and double precision results.

[2] MIPS are derived by dividing the rating produced by version 1.1 of the
    Dhrystone test by 1,757.  I used the average of ten runs of the test,
    51,651.

What is the source of your rumor, Sequent Marketing?  :-)