Benchmarking Atari ST Personal Pascal versus IBM PC AT Turbo Pascal
As soon as I purchased Personal Pascal (V1.01) for my 1040 ST, I ran some simple benchmarks on it against our IBM PC AT at my office. Our AT is equipped with a speed-switcher to increase the clock rate from the normal 6 MHz to 8MHz. Since this is a fairly common item, and because newer ATs are set up to run at 8 MHz, I included these times in the test as well.
All tests on the PC AT were run in Borland Turbo Pascal (Version 3.01), the de facto standard for MS-DOS Pascal. Because Turbo Pascal defaults are for range, pointer, and debugging checking turned off, they were turned off for the Personal Pascal versions as well. Times on the AT were measured using the hardware timers; I used a handheld stopwatch for the ST, but hopefully they are fairly accurate. All tests on the ST were compiled for TOS.
The Sieve benchmark is the standard test which everybody seems to run on all machines, and it primarily tests integer math operations (actually only integer addition). The fibonacci benchmark tests the recursion code efficiency of the compiler. The float benchmark is a test of the efficiency of the simple floating point operations (+,-,*,/) directly supported by the CPU. The trig/transcendental benchmark measures the efficiency of some of the trigonometric and transcendental library functions supported by the compiler.
I don't claim that these benchmarks are especially definitive, but they do seem to prove that the Atari ST is extremely competitive with the IBM PC AT in terms of a Pascal programming environment, particularly for scientific/engineering applications involving floating point math. The code for each of the tests follows the table summary.
-- Kirk Pennywitt [74116,3222] --
PASCAL BENCHMARK SUMMARY
========================
ATARI ST PC AT (6 MHz) PC AT (8 MHz)
---------------------------------------------------------
Sieve 6.1 sec. 5.38 sec. 3.95 sec.
Fibonacci 23.6 sec. 23.67 sec. 17.36 sec.
Floating Point 10.1 sec. 14.56 sec. 10.71 sec.
Trig/Transc. 14.1 sec. 16.31 sec. 11.98 sec.
Atari ST OSS Personal Pascal (V1.01) versus
IBM PC AT Borland Turbo Pascal (V3.01).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{$R-,D-,P-}
(* Erastosthenes Sieve Prime Number Program *)
(* Tests integer math *)
program prime;
const
size = 8190;
var
flags : array [0..size] of boolean;
i,prime,k,count,iter : integer;
begin
writeln('10 iterations');
for iter := 1 to 10 do begin
count := 0;
for i := 0 to size do
flags[i] := true;
for i := 0 to size do
if flags[i] then begin
prime := i+i+3;
{writeln(prime);}
k := i+prime;
while k <= size do begin
flags[k] := false;
k := k + prime
end;
count := count + 1
end;
end;
writeln(count,' primes.')
end.
{ Runs in approx 6.1 sec. on Atari ST (Personal Pascal). }
{ Runs in 5.38 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 6 MHz. (Turbo Pascal). }
{ Runs in 3.95 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 8 MHz. (Turbo Pascal). }
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{$R-,D-,P-}
program fibo; { Tests recursion }
const
ntimes = 10;
number = 23;
var
i, value : integer;
function fibo(x : integer) : integer;
begin
if x>2 then fibo := (fibo(x-1) + fibo(x-2))
else fibo := 1;
end; { of function fibo }
begin
writeln(ntimes,' iterations.');
for i := 1 to ntimes do value := fibo(number);
writeln('fibonacci(',number,') = ',value);
end.
{ Runs in approx. 23.6 sec on Atari ST (Personal Pascal). }
{ Runs in 23.67 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 6 Mhz. (Turbo Pascal). }
{ Runs in 17.36 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 8 MHz. (Turbo Pascal). }
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{$D-,R-,P-}
program float; { Tests floating point operations }
var
a, b, c : real;
i : integer;
begin
writeln('10000 iterations.');
a := 3.1415926;
b := 5.1234548;
for i := 1 to 10000 do begin
c := a * b;
b := a / c;
a := b + c;
c := a - b;
end;
writeln('Done.');
end.
{ Runs in approx. 10.1 sec. on Atari ST (Personal Pascal). }
{ Runs in 14.56 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 6 MHz. (Turbo Pascal). }
{ Runs in 10.71 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 8 MHz. (Turbo Pascal). }
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{$D-,R-,P-}
program trig_trans; { Tests trig and transcendental libraries}
var
a, b, c : real;
i : integer;
begin
writeln('1000 iterations.');
a := 3.1415926;
b := 5.1234548;
for i := 1 to 1000 do begin
c := ln(a);
c := exp(b);
c := sin(a);
c := cos(b);
end;
writeln('Done.');
end.
{ Runs in approx. 14.1 sec. on Atari ST (Personal Pascal). }
{ Runs in 16.31 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 6 MHz. (Turbo Pascal). }
{ Runs in 11.98 sec. on IBM PC AT @ 8 MHz. (Turbo Pascal). } 
