Really really fast BASIC handheld

[Dave Britten]

(03-08-2021 09:26 PM)berndpr Wrote:  But I tried to use the 8 queen benchmark test with exactly the same BASIC code on my switch witn the first hardware revision.

By 1000 repeated loop, I got

Switch 1. HW version with Smilebasic 4:
2.67 seconds without docking station
2.93 seconds with docking station

new DSXL with SmileBasic 3:
11.98 seconds.

The switch is only 4 times faster as a new 2DSXL.
I thought it should be more.

And the switch was in the docking station slower!

The speed difference between the two machines seems reasonable. The New 2DS/3DS XL CPU can run at 800 MHz, and the Switch CPU speed is 1020 MHz, whether docked or undocked. The Switch, of course, uses a much newer generation of ARM cores - Cortex A57 and A53 cores vs. the older ARM 11. And presumably the actual BASIC interpreter is only single-threaded, meaning it would only be running on one of the eight cores in the Switch, and one of the four cores in the 3DS, making the core-count difference largely irrelevant.

I'm not really sure why there would be such a measurable difference between docked and undocked performance in the Switch, though, particularly why it would be slower when docked. More CPU time needed to handle the higher GPU and memory bus speeds maybe?