Creative Computing Benchmark: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:31, 15 March 2019

Revision as of 13:47, 18 March 2019

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{{cquote|...the benchmark program presented here is not representative of the way computers are actually used; it measures only a few aspects of performance, and no one should buy a computer based solely on the results of these measures. Yet, the results provide some interesting comparative data.{{sfn|Ahl|1983|p=259}}}}

The initial results were provided for common machines of the era, including the [[Apple II]], [[Commodore 64]] and the recently-released [[IBM PC]]. Most of these machines ran some variation of the stock [[Microsoft BASIC]] and thus provided similar times on the order of two minutes, while the [[16-bit]] PC was near the top of the list at only 24 seconds. the fastest machine in this initial versionsuite was the [[Olivetti M20]] at 13 seconds, and the slowest was [[Atari BASIC]] on the [[Atari 800]] at 6 minutes 58 seconds.{{sfn|Ahl|1983|p=260}}

In the months following its publication, the magazine was inundated with results for other platforms. It became a regular feature for a time, placed prominently near the front of the magazine with an ever-growing list of results. By March the fastest machine on the list was the [[Cray-1]] at 0.01 seconds, and the slowest was the [[TI SR-50]] [[programmable calculator]] at 12.7 days.{{sfn|Ahl|1984|p=7}}

The benchmark had several problems that made it less useful for general purposes. For instance, the system did not test any string manipulationsmanipulation, who's performance varied widely across platforms. It also did not take advantage of any "speedups" available on different platforms, like the possible use of integer variables for loop indexes or turning off video access on machines with shared main memory.{{efn|Most 8-bit machines of the era had a single bank of RAM that was shared between the CPU and display driver, which led to bus contention issues that slowed performance as much as 30%. Turning off the display was a common way to improve compute-bound programs like this benchmark.{{sfn|Wilkinson|1985|p=140}}}} These limitations were widely debated at the time.{{sfn|Wilkinson|1985|p=139}}

Its last appearance is in the May 1984 issue, which included values for 183 machines. This issue included a note that the many criticisms of the system had been taken to heart and a new benchmark program was under design.<ref>{{cite magazine |magazine=Creative Computing |date=May 1984 |page=6 |first=David |last=Ahl |title=Creative Computing Benchmark |url=https://archive.org/details/creativecomputing-1984-05/page/n9}}</ref> However, such a program never appeared in the magazine, which increasingly focused on the business market that was coming to dominate [[personal computer]]s in that era.