Can my CAS Savage benchmark be improved? CAS newbie

[Han]

Here's my own opinion about optimizing benchmark programs: don't do it (except...)

This would give you a true benchmark of one firmware vs the next -- because the benchmark is literally unchanged. Any performance differences can therefore be completely attributed to firmware changes. If you are constantly optimizing your benchmark, then one set of tests will no longer be comparable to another set of tests -- especially across different firmwares (which is what you would want if you are trying to benchmark firmwares).

Instead, if you can do any optimization, simply create a new function with a similar name so that you still have the old function to cross reference against older firmware. For example, if BENCH1 is a program that can then be optimized, keep BENCH1 exactly as is and make a copy to BENCH2, and add the optimizations to BENCH2. Then your benchmark suite will not only enable you to see performance differences between different techniques, but it will also enable you to consistently compare firmware differences as well.

EDIT: Also, to use MAKELIST for a for loop:

Code:


FOR J FROM 1 TO 1000 DO
  ... code for FOR loop here ...
END;

Can be converted to:

Code:


MYFORLP()
BEGIN
  ... code for FOR loop here ...
END;


EXPORT MAIN()
BEGIN
MAKELIST(MYFORLP(),I,1,2499);
END;