Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon
From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Dhrystone
Message-ID: <8808182113.AA24771@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 18 Aug 88 21:13:55 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 25

:In article <8808180050.AA05343@cory.Berkeley.EDU> dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
:| 	Does that answer you question?  I am not tarring either Lattice or 
:| Manx, but pointing out two things people do not seem to understand about
:| benchmarks.  (1) Never fine tune a benchmark, and (2) Benchmarks are 
:| incredibly difficult to write if written properly.
:| 
:| 	Going a little deeper:  A properly written benchmark should be 
:| difficult to fine-tune (anybody else catch that inference?)
:| 
:| 						-Matt
:
:No.  A properly written benchmark should reflect the intended use of the
:system.  If my system is constantly being used to solve systems of
:linear equations, then LINPACK is a great benchmark, and if a compiler
:can automatically unroll the inner-loop of saxpy or whatever, so much
:the better.

	You mean:  "Also, A probably written benchmark should....".  When
I say fine-tune, I mean modify the 'standard' language/compiler/or benchmark
itself to make the perceived results look better.  A Benchmark has never meant
'The best that can be done', but more as a relative comparison agaist other
languages and machines.  Those who take the time to write incredibly optimized 
code will get better results for their product, but that is not comparable to
other languages/machines unless they take the time to optimize each one.

						-Matt