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The Register: Transmeta speed debate — damned lies and benchmarks?

“The problem is that Transmeta’s new chip confounds the
traditional one-pass benchmarks that their propeller head authors
have spent years perfecting. Since the Transmeta architecture
allows for dynamic and smart execution of code in software, the
first pass of any test sample is guaranteed to be if not crap, then
not quite optimal. With the instruction set and performance
heuristics in software – a compromise that allows the chip itself
to throttle back its frequency and voltage – judging a Crusoe on
first-pass benchmarks is like judging a marrow competition based on
the seeds. It isn’t going to give you the full picture.”

“So unsurprisingly, the three benchmarks we’ve looked at
pronounce the Crusoe a dog. To the magazines’ credit (or at least
most of them), that’s qualified by a note that their benchmark
shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

“PC Magazine (US) states: ‘The PictureBook is a bit anemic
[sic], even when set to maximum performance,’ but then qualifies
this by pointing out ‘the Winstone benchmark test does not repeat
tasks, which minimizes opportunities for the Code Morphing
technology to have an effect.'”

Complete
Story

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