Hmm. The factor of 1.33 could be explained if BeebEm is actually running the Second Processor at 3MHz instead of 4. The fifth line does look odd however. This is the first case that spends significant time in 24-bit mode (mainly because the 16/8 bit division routine doesn't *quite* work with >7-bit divisors).

I'm running it again on the BBC Master's main CPU, which should definitely be at 2MHz.

That's fairly likely - the 3MHz hypothesis - as the original external 'cheese wedge' second processor was 3MHz. The later internally fitted Turbo second processor in the Master was (is) 4MHz.

I'm wondering - should I spin up my Matchbox second processor, which runs at 64MHz? It's an FPGA so maybe not felt to be relevant.

That would be amusing if nothing else. I'm slightly more interested in the 16MHz "Jaguar".

Meanwhile I found a disassembly of the second 68K assembler version of this bench:

I remember that I hacked in this code with the one line assembler being part of the monitor. That is the reason for these NOPs here and there - I had to estimate the displacement But as the result was so much faster than all I had tested so far, there was no need to tweak anything. And I remember it was amazing to me to translate an integer basic program on the fly into machine code. That was definitely a benefit of these CISC machine.

Don't hesitate

Sadly the BBC micro comes out rather late. When I heard about it the first time I was puzzled - a 6502 ? That seemed ages ago. And my mind was on "higher" things like Amiga/Atari or other 68K machines. Or perhaps a Z-8000 or there was rumours about something from National Semiconductor (NS160XX, later NS320XX). So I ignore the BBC considered him "outdated". Well, one can be wrong

In the first moment I thought about the transition from 16/8 to 24/16 bit division. Could that be so significant? But then, why is the last number and the corresponding ratio well in line again? The transition should there even more prominent I assume.

If you could verify that again: fantastic!


Cheers,
Arne

(Hmm, BBC Micro launched at the end of 1981, the Atari ST 1985... the Beeb wasn't outdated at launch, especially with the 2MHz CPU which made it about the fastest 6502 machine available, IIRC. But you're right to mention the NS32k as that was one of the second processors eventually available for the Beeb, making it a 32 bit scientific workstation.)

Somehow the BBC marketing machine doesn't work in Germany. The only British producer that was "present" was Clive Sinclair with his machines (one was Z-80 based, don't recall the name, the second was the "QL" with its (in)famous tape drive!). Also Commodore was prominent but machines like the CoCo wasn't that "present" that they should have been. I am sure I had buy one (CoCo) if I had known it was available with OS-9 running on it.

The story with the BBC Micro was that the BBC wanted to promote computer literacy in the UK, and needed a standard, inexpensive home computer with a high-quality BASIC to do it - and by "high quality", they meant that none of the ubiquitous M$ derived BASICs would do. As a side-effect, they also wanted a machine that could overlay text and graphics on a broadcast TV signal with minimal added hardware.

Acorn at the time had the Atom, which was a reasonably powerful machine but came with a very simple OS and BASIC. They were however working on a new version, and convinced the BBC that they could do a high-quality BASIC to the BBC's specifications on a 6502, which remained the least expensive CPU with sufficient capabilities on the market. This freed up enough of the parts budget to include a huge amount of expandability, including built-in A/D converters (analogue joystick/paddle interface), sockets for expansion ROMS, a LAN interface (not Ethernet, think more like LocalTalk) and a floppy drive controller.

You might wish to compare the prices of the BBC Micro and the various contemporary Apple machines. The former was always triple digits of pounds sterling; the latter were often quadruple digits of US dollars, despite Woz' genius at minimising circuitry.

With the Atari ST arriving in 1985, it's worth noting that the first ARM CPU was built that year - as a BBC Micro Second Processor, of course, because it was originally an Acorn product! It took a couple more years to reach retail in the Archimedes, but now ARM is *the* most popular CPU in the world - you probably have at least half a dozen of them in your smartphone, and another half-dozen in various inconspicuous parts of your PC. Its original development was funded by the success of the BBC Micro.

But the BBC Master didn't arrive until 1986. Really, it was a stopgap until the Archimedes could be developed properly.

And now the benchmark results:

Thank you!

Hmm, now we have a factor of 2.1 between the (old) cycle counts and the given times. Except for line 5 where the result is 2.52
That must be something else. Either the old count is wrong (typo?) or somewhat strange else is lurking there

B-Em is giving broadly consistent results with BeebEm, so the most likely answer is that the cycle counts from my emulator are wrong somehow. I'll have to look into that separately.

Then I assume the 4 MHz rating of the second µP (as stated in the table) needs to be corrected to 3 MHz. And I could enter another line with "Asm, ~Pascal V"" as a hint what algorithm was used?

The algorithm used is closest to the C code I used on my Raspberry Pi - that is, it not only avoids sqrt but also the multiply when updating the divisor limit. Since the 6502 doesn't have hardware multiply, this is a significant win, but it's a valid optimisation even on today's PCs.

It is just to have a somehow working comparison base. Pascal V2 uses "while ( (i*i < x) and (x mod i <> 0))". That seems to me roughly equivalent to your code. Or?

If we allow for compilers performing automatic strength reduction, then it's probably close enough.

B-Em allows setting the clock speed of the Second Processor explicitly, so now I have real numbers for 4MHz - and for 16MHz and 64MHz, too. It would still be interesting to compare with real 16MHz hardware.