[TUHS] Lorinda Cherry

Tom Ivar Helbekkmo tih at hamartun.priv.no
Fri Feb 18 05:59:46 AEST 2022


Leah Neukirchen <leah at vuxu.org> writes:

> Apparently it was a popular benchmark back in the day:
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V05.1.pdf
>> [...]
>> By comparison, a VAX 11/780 clocks about 5 to 6 secs, VAX750 9 sec, PDPIIs
>> range from 27 secs (11/23) to 6 secs (11/70), PDP ii/34s range from 12 to 19
>> secs depending upon the presence of a cache. Perkin-Elmer range from 12o5
>> secs (32/10) to 7°9 secs (32/40)o

Well, I just had to run it on some older hardware...

12MHz 80286 running MINIX 1.6.25 and the classic C version of dc:
real        4.00
user        3.56
sys         0.25

DEC MicroPDP-11/23 running PWB UNIX 1.0 and the assembly coded dc:
real       29.0
user       22.2
sys         0.7

Watching the prime number generator (from the Wikipedia page on dc)
running on the 11/23 is much more entertaining than doing it on the
modern workstation I'm typing this on:

2p3p[dl!d2+s!%0=@l!l^!<#]s#[s/0ds^]s@[p]s&[ddvs^3s!l#x0<&2+l.x]ds.x

Incidentally, the Wikipedia page only lists Robert Morris as author of
dc.  If anyone here is able to edit Wikipedia, now would be a good time
to get Lorinda Cherry's name on there, too.

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay


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