From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:info-cpm
Newsgroups: fa.info-cpm
Title: [decvax!harpo!duke!hes: IBM PC Benchmark]
Article-I.D.: ucb.1074
Posted: Thu May 13 00:20:44 1982
Received: Thu May 13 05:24:36 1982

>From W8SDZ@Mit-Mc Thu May 13 00:20:33 1982
Date: 12 May 82 13:09:20-EDT (Wed)
From: decvax!harpo!duke!hes at Berkeley
To:   info-micro at mit-ai
Re:   IBM PC Benchmark
Article-I.D.: duke.2129
Via:  news.usenet; 12 May 82 12:08-PDT

                   Benchmarking the IBM PC
  As an example of a heavily computational program, I wrote a
Basic program which fills two 10x10 matrices with values, and
then multiplies them together.  It is all done in single precision,
with essentially no I/O.
  It took 18-19 seconds.  (Same with disk and advanced BASICs.)
  I then ran it on a TRS-80 Model I Level II (unmodified with the
normal 1.77 MHz clock) and it took 36-37 seconds.  (Note that 2x or
greater clock speed ups are available.)
  I also ran it on a standard North Star Horizon, with and
without the floating point hardware board.  Without the
board it took 18 seconds and with the board it took 14 sec.
(The Horizon has a Z-80 with a 4 MHz clock.)
Several other cpu intensive programs gave the same relative
performances.
  From these tests it appears that the IBM PC runs BASIC
programs at a comparable speed to an 8080/Z-80 family
cpu with a 4 MHz clock.
  Since the IBM PC is supposed to have its 8088 running with
a 4.88 (?) MHz clock, it would appear that the present
generation of IBM PC software does not take advantage of the
internal 16 bit architecture of the 8088.  (Or perhaps is
just not as efficient as some older, more polished software.)
  --henry schaffer