Date   : Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:45:32 +0100
From   : kortink@... (John Kortink)
Subject: 32016 + 32082

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 12:08:46 +0100, Patrick Kaell <sparc@...>
wrote:

>On 12/17/2011 05:21 AM, David Hunt wrote:
>>> I've just acquired a 32016 Second Processor, and I've noticed that this
>>> one has a 32082 MMU on board.
>
>How did the performance compare to the 68000?
>
>According to this Wikipedia article:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#32-bit_designs
>
>the NS32016/32 outperformed the MC68000/10.
>
>What about the 80186 in the Master 512? The 80186 contained many 
>optimizations of the 80286 without the protected mode. Since Acorn 
>considered adopting 80286 before designing the ARM, it must have a real 
>speed advantage to the 6502, which seems not to be the case for the 32016?

You have to be very careful making comparisons like that.
The hardware itself is one factor, but (lack of) efficiency
in software (including compilers) is another, and is almost
never evaluated in benchmarks.

Certainly when a company adopts a new processor, knowledge
on how to use it efficiently is thin on the ground, which
tends to lead to suboptimal software performance, early on.

It is doubtful, for example, that BASIC for the 32016 was
created from scratch, and went through some comprehensive
optimization phases. It is likely that it is a crude or even
automatic translation of the 6502 version. The performance
suffers accordingly. The 6502 and 32016 are quite different
beasts, and coding in 32016 assembly would probably require
rethinking the coding strategy in many parts of the code.

>[...]


John Kortink

-- 

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