Xref: utzoo comp.arch:6076 comp.lang.prolog:1188
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!eos!eugene
From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.prolog
Subject: Re: Perils of comparison -- an example
Message-ID: <1303@eos.UUCP>
Date: 15 Aug 88 18:55:25 GMT
References: <282@quintus.UUCP> <15221@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <292@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.
Lines: 35

In article <292@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>Don't get me wrong:  Naive Reverse is not a specially good benchmark.

I see you came from prolog and cross posted to arch.

>There is a single specific benchmark, called naive reverse, which happens
>to do 496 procedure calls.  To determine the kLI/s rating, you run this
>benchmark N times, for some large N.  If it takes T seconds, you report
>(496*N)/T as the LIPS rating.

I've stated this many times in comp.arch, and I'll repeat this once
for the prolog community benefit.  Measurement of repetition
isn't equivalent to repetition of measurement on a computer. Cache,
paging, and optimization conspire against oversimplistic
measurements of this type.

>When you are benchmarking, it is necessary to be precise 

You said it all.

I've been trying to find out what "really constitutes a Logical
Instruction" As far as I can tell, it's totally arbitrary whereas
Instructions and Operations tend to correspond to discrete states
(barring instruction pipelining, yes yes....).  (Yes I have Gabriel's
thesis and others).

Your keyword about measuring prolog is "naive."  This isn't a putdown,
but the prolog community will have to recognize some of these problems.

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
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  {uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
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