willc@tekchips.UUCP (Will Clinger) (06/08/85)
Earlier this year Semantic Microsystems ported a Scheme (Lisp) byte code interpreter from my Sage II to a Macintosh. The interpreter kernel and heap image were ported in binary form, so there is no doubt that the Macintosh was executing exactly the same machine instructions as the Sage. On every one of our standard Scheme benchmarks the Macintosh was 49-51% slower than the Sage. Since the Sage has an 8 MHz clock with zero wait states, I conclude that the effective clock rate of the Macintosh lies between 5.3 and 5.4 MHz. In other words, the video refresh interrupt (and whatever code was associated with it by the stock Finder that we were using) eats up a third of the processor. William Clinger willc@tekchips