8 ms·

Byte magazine (1984): Benchmarking Unix

86 points by rsecora 6y ago

rsecora 6y ago
Some links inside the article. Byte magazine was plenty of ads, and articles can continue after jumping 300 pages Start: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n137/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n137/... Continuation: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n405/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n405/... Results: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n411/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n411/...
- blakesterz 6y ago
  I love looking trough the ads! An Apple II, and a color printer from Apple. Compuserve's CB Simulator. Ads for drives that hold Megbytes of data. So many different peripherals and PC makers. UltraPlan Spreadsheet Calculator. An ad for an Assembler. One for Unix Sys V from AT&T. Modem after modem. Compuserve's CB Simulator sounds like it must've been awesome!
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    Seeing the article about the "Transputer" was interesting especially given the announcement of the UK government's investment into quantum computing.
  - siffland 6y ago
    From the beginning of Byte magazine until about 1984 are really fun to read. The ads were probably annoying at the time of release, but not they are fun and interesting to read. I like the 1983 issue with imaging where they are talking about movie effects for "Tron" and "Revenge of the Jedi". I wished they would of had more UNIX in the issues, however it was usually unaffordable. But a fun look, at least for me, to the history of computing. And who does not like an ad for a 8MB, $3999 disk drive subsystem.
    - magoghm 6y ago
      The ads were not annoying at the time of release. I really enjoyed reading those ads and finding out about products specs and prices, remember that we didn’t have the Web back then and Byte magazine was my main source of information about what was available.
      - Someone 6y ago
        Indeed. Complaining about the ads in Byte would have been like complaining about the ads in the yellow pages. Byte almost was reverse Playboy: you almost didn’t read it for the articles.
        therealcamino 6y ago
        Even more true for Computer Shopper! At its peak it was probably an inch thick every month, and 99% ads. But in pre-Internet days, very useful.
        C1sc0cat 6y ago
        Really! the articles where the main point - just whish I had had the nerve to use the $25 diy modem Steve Garcia for one project instead of paying £300 for an answer and £600 for an answer originate.
        rsecora 6y ago
        ¿Steve Ciarcia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia
        vram22 6y ago
        >Steve Garcia Steve Ciarcia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia His BYTE electronics DIY project articles in his Circuit Cellar column were so well-written that I used to enjoy browsing them even though I'm not an electronics guy, gleaning what I could about the topic. He even did one about a 32-bit computer, when 8 and 16 bits were still the standard! The Definicon motherboard/CPU, I think it was about.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    CB Simulator was basically IRC before that became a thing. It even had channels. Probably blew a few minds in 1980 though!
  - emidln 6y ago
    The International Journal of PoC||GTFO [0] includes a lot of old tech ads if you're into that thing. A nice touch alongside the hardcore engineering feats you see in the publication. [0] https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/ https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/
  - icedchai 6y ago
    I remember using the CB Simulator when I was a young teen back in the 80's! That was my first introduction to multi-user stuff. It was cutting edge for the time.
    - lakkal 6y ago
      Same here, and it really sharpened my typing skill.
- GrumpyNl 6y ago
  Thqnx for that, my first pc is on the next page, the apricot. Paid around 9.000 gulden which is around 4.300 euro for it.
pjmlp 6y ago
Right beside an ad for an Modula-2 compiler, the irony.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Maakuth 6y ago
Laying out code in variable width font like a boss :). I love reading these BYTE scans from archive.org, they are from such a different computing world. Yet UNIX is the same.
- msla 6y ago
  > Yet UNIX is the same. Use V7 Unix in an emulator and say that. Unix didn't have networking, mmap(), or job control shells back then, and that's about the level some of the benchmarked Unix variants were at.
  - Maakuth 6y ago
    Fair point. My notion was mainly stemming from the looks of the shell scripts in the article.
Taniwha 6y ago
Heh - I worked on 2 of those systems .... remember these are systems with ~1/2Mb of ram and 1-2 mips of CPU. Most are swapping systems, no paging.
patchtopic 6y ago
The scripts still run, my ancient (1st or 2nd gen) Raspberry Pi gets 0.54 seconds for the multi .. 6 benchmark
- rsecora 6y ago
  That means the VAX-11/760 (120.000$-160.000$) was 27 times slower for that benchmark. And the PC-XT running PC/IX was 260x slower.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    The VAX was also the size of a wardrobe. Interesting to see that it was still leading the pack, more or less, even though it was a 1977 design compared to the smaller and cheaper micros from the 80s - including the Lisa, which clearly was not a fast computer.
    - icedchai 6y ago
      VAX 11/780's were large machines. By the mid 80's you could get a MicroVAX which weren't quite as powerful, but much smaller. In the late 80's, I knew a guy who had one at home.
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago
      Several wardrobes :-)
    - msla 6y ago
      There were desktop VAX systems. The MicroVAX II, for example: http://gunkies.org/wiki/MicroVAX_II http://gunkies.org/wiki/MicroVAX_II The VAX ISA was implemented in a wide range of technologies, from TTL (the 1970s VAXen) up through true microprocessors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroVAX_78032 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroVAX_78032
tr352 6y ago
They write it's "interesting to note" the the IBM PC XT 8088 performed better than the PDP-11/23. I suppose the PDP was a much more expensive machine.
- flyinghamster 6y ago
  The 11/23 was one of the lower-priced PDP-11s, based on the F-11 chipset. I'm pretty sure it would have cost a fair bit more than an XT, though, especially fitted out with the necessary memory and peripherals. That being said, Heathkit offered earlier LSI-11 machines (which used bit-slice processors) for several years. As a student at a high school with an 11/34, I would have loved to have an H11 or H11A at home, but the Apple II+ that we did have served the family well. A factory-assembled and tested Heathkit H11A, sans memory, storage, or terminal, was $1895 in 1970s money.[1] Buying the kit would save you $700, which would have been well worth it since the CPU board was a stock DEC KD11-HA [2], already assembled and tested anyway. [1] https://heathkit.garlanger.com/hardware/systems/H11/ https://heathkit.garlanger.com/hardware/systems/H11/ [2] http://gunkies.org/wiki/LSI-11/2 http://gunkies.org/wiki/LSI-11/2
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kps 6y ago
  The PC also had no MMU or OS overhead.
  - msla 6y ago
    > The PC also had no MMU or OS overhead. No MMU, sure, but the whole point of this was to benchmark an OS. It's all about the OS overhead.
  - jhallenworld 6y ago
    The 68K had no MMU or even segment registers, so the 68K machines that can run UNIX had, at the very least, some kind of external memory offset adder. I did not know the Apple Lisa had this- it's interesting because Macs didn't have it and could not run UNIX.
johnklos 6y ago
The Byte Benchmark suite can still be downloaded, compiled and run today. It's in pkgsrc, FreeBSD's ports, and can be trivially compiled on common GNU/Linux distros.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Katzmann1983 6y ago
In the Docker container on my laptop, the multi.sh 1 2 3 4 5 6 takes 0.031 seconds. https://github.com/Katzmann1983/performance_test_shell/blob/master/tst.sh https://github.com/Katzmann1983/performance_test_shell/blob/...
mwcampbell 6y ago
The most popular modern descendant of this benchmark suite is here: https://github.com/kdlucas/byte-unixbench https://github.com/kdlucas/byte-unixbench
FandangoRanger 6y ago
The Byte benchmarks are still very useful today. They’re also old enough that it’s doubtful that compiler makers are going to accelerate them (we know Intel does this), because barely anybody uses them any more.
phcordner 6y ago
In the 6a. shell benchmark, what's the modern equivalent of the "+" option in sort from the below line? od sort.$$ | sort -n + 1 > od.$$
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rsecora 6y ago
  -k POS From the FreeBSD 2.1 man page [1] +POS1 [-POS2] Specify a field within each line to use as a sort ing key. The field consists of the portion of the line starting at POS1 and up to (but not including) POS2 (or to the end of the line if POS2 is not given). The fields and character positions are numbered starting with 0. [1] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sort&apropos=0&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+2.1.5-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sort&apropos=0&sek...
- agapon 6y ago
  I think that +1 translates to -k 2. And, at least, FreeBSD's sort still supports +N.

86 points by rsecora 6y ago

Some links inside the article. Byte magazine was plenty of ads, and articles can continue after jumping 300 pages Start: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n137/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n137/... Continuation: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n405/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n405/... Results: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n411/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n411/...

blakesterz 6y ago
I love looking trough the ads! An Apple II, and a color printer from Apple. Compuserve's CB Simulator. Ads for drives that hold Megbytes of data. So many different peripherals and PC makers. UltraPlan Spreadsheet Calculator. An ad for an Assembler. One for Unix Sys V from AT&T. Modem after modem. Compuserve's CB Simulator sounds like it must've been awesome!
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Seeing the article about the "Transputer" was interesting especially given the announcement of the UK government's investment into quantum computing.
- siffland 6y ago
  From the beginning of Byte magazine until about 1984 are really fun to read. The ads were probably annoying at the time of release, but not they are fun and interesting to read. I like the 1983 issue with imaging where they are talking about movie effects for "Tron" and "Revenge of the Jedi". I wished they would of had more UNIX in the issues, however it was usually unaffordable. But a fun look, at least for me, to the history of computing. And who does not like an ad for a 8MB, $3999 disk drive subsystem.
  - magoghm 6y ago
    The ads were not annoying at the time of release. I really enjoyed reading those ads and finding out about products specs and prices, remember that we didn’t have the Web back then and Byte magazine was my main source of information about what was available.
    - Someone 6y ago
      Indeed. Complaining about the ads in Byte would have been like complaining about the ads in the yellow pages. Byte almost was reverse Playboy: you almost didn’t read it for the articles.
      - therealcamino 6y ago
        Even more true for Computer Shopper! At its peak it was probably an inch thick every month, and 99% ads. But in pre-Internet days, very useful.
      - C1sc0cat 6y ago
        Really! the articles where the main point - just whish I had had the nerve to use the $25 diy modem Steve Garcia for one project instead of paying £300 for an answer and £600 for an answer originate.
        rsecora 6y ago
        ¿Steve Ciarcia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia
        vram22 6y ago
        >Steve Garcia Steve Ciarcia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ciarcia His BYTE electronics DIY project articles in his Circuit Cellar column were so well-written that I used to enjoy browsing them even though I'm not an electronics guy, gleaning what I could about the topic. He even did one about a 32-bit computer, when 8 and 16 bits were still the standard! The Definicon motherboard/CPU, I think it was about.
- bitwize 6y ago
  CB Simulator was basically IRC before that became a thing. It even had channels. Probably blew a few minds in 1980 though!
- emidln 6y ago
  The International Journal of PoC||GTFO [0] includes a lot of old tech ads if you're into that thing. A nice touch alongside the hardcore engineering feats you see in the publication. [0] https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/ https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/
- icedchai 6y ago
  I remember using the CB Simulator when I was a young teen back in the 80's! That was my first introduction to multi-user stuff. It was cutting edge for the time.
  - lakkal 6y ago
    Same here, and it really sharpened my typing skill.
GrumpyNl 6y ago
Thqnx for that, my first pc is on the next page, the apricot. Paid around 9.000 gulden which is around 4.300 euro for it.

pjmlp 6y ago

Right beside an ad for an Modula-2 compiler, the irony.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Maakuth 6y ago

Laying out code in variable width font like a boss :). I love reading these BYTE scans from archive.org, they are from such a different computing world. Yet UNIX is the same.

msla 6y ago
> Yet UNIX is the same. Use V7 Unix in an emulator and say that. Unix didn't have networking, mmap(), or job control shells back then, and that's about the level some of the benchmarked Unix variants were at.
- Maakuth 6y ago
  Fair point. My notion was mainly stemming from the looks of the shell scripts in the article.

Taniwha 6y ago

Heh - I worked on 2 of those systems .... remember these are systems with ~1/2Mb of ram and 1-2 mips of CPU. Most are swapping systems, no paging.

patchtopic 6y ago

The scripts still run, my ancient (1st or 2nd gen) Raspberry Pi gets 0.54 seconds for the multi .. 6 benchmark

rsecora 6y ago
That means the VAX-11/760 (120.000$-160.000$) was 27 times slower for that benchmark. And the PC-XT running PC/IX was 260x slower.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  The VAX was also the size of a wardrobe. Interesting to see that it was still leading the pack, more or less, even though it was a 1977 design compared to the smaller and cheaper micros from the 80s - including the Lisa, which clearly was not a fast computer.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    VAX 11/780's were large machines. By the mid 80's you could get a MicroVAX which weren't quite as powerful, but much smaller. In the late 80's, I knew a guy who had one at home.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    Several wardrobes :-)
  - msla 6y ago
    There were desktop VAX systems. The MicroVAX II, for example: http://gunkies.org/wiki/MicroVAX_II http://gunkies.org/wiki/MicroVAX_II The VAX ISA was implemented in a wide range of technologies, from TTL (the 1970s VAXen) up through true microprocessors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroVAX_78032 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroVAX_78032

tr352 6y ago

They write it's "interesting to note" the the IBM PC XT 8088 performed better than the PDP-11/23. I suppose the PDP was a much more expensive machine.

flyinghamster 6y ago
The 11/23 was one of the lower-priced PDP-11s, based on the F-11 chipset. I'm pretty sure it would have cost a fair bit more than an XT, though, especially fitted out with the necessary memory and peripherals. That being said, Heathkit offered earlier LSI-11 machines (which used bit-slice processors) for several years. As a student at a high school with an 11/34, I would have loved to have an H11 or H11A at home, but the Apple II+ that we did have served the family well. A factory-assembled and tested Heathkit H11A, sans memory, storage, or terminal, was $1895 in 1970s money.[1] Buying the kit would save you $700, which would have been well worth it since the CPU board was a stock DEC KD11-HA [2], already assembled and tested anyway. [1] https://heathkit.garlanger.com/hardware/systems/H11/ https://heathkit.garlanger.com/hardware/systems/H11/ [2] http://gunkies.org/wiki/LSI-11/2 http://gunkies.org/wiki/LSI-11/2
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kps 6y ago
The PC also had no MMU or OS overhead.
- msla 6y ago
  > The PC also had no MMU or OS overhead. No MMU, sure, but the whole point of this was to benchmark an OS. It's all about the OS overhead.
- jhallenworld 6y ago
  The 68K had no MMU or even segment registers, so the 68K machines that can run UNIX had, at the very least, some kind of external memory offset adder. I did not know the Apple Lisa had this- it's interesting because Macs didn't have it and could not run UNIX.

johnklos 6y ago

The Byte Benchmark suite can still be downloaded, compiled and run today. It's in pkgsrc, FreeBSD's ports, and can be trivially compiled on common GNU/Linux distros.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Katzmann1983 6y ago

In the Docker container on my laptop, the multi.sh 1 2 3 4 5 6 takes 0.031 seconds. https://github.com/Katzmann1983/performance_test_shell/blob/master/tst.sh https://github.com/Katzmann1983/performance_test_shell/blob/...

mwcampbell 6y ago

The most popular modern descendant of this benchmark suite is here: https://github.com/kdlucas/byte-unixbench https://github.com/kdlucas/byte-unixbench

FandangoRanger 6y ago

The Byte benchmarks are still very useful today. They’re also old enough that it’s doubtful that compiler makers are going to accelerate them (we know Intel does this), because barely anybody uses them any more.

phcordner 6y ago

In the 6a. shell benchmark, what's the modern equivalent of the "+" option in sort from the below line? od sort.$$ | sort -n + 1 > od.$$

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rsecora 6y ago
-k POS From the FreeBSD 2.1 man page [1] +POS1 [-POS2] Specify a field within each line to use as a sort ing key. The field consists of the portion of the line starting at POS1 and up to (but not including) POS2 (or to the end of the line if POS2 is not given). The fields and character positions are numbered starting with 0. [1] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sort&apropos=0&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+2.1.5-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sort&apropos=0&sek...
agapon 6y ago
I think that +1 translates to -k 2. And, at least, FreeBSD's sort still supports +N.