Computer Family Architecture Selection Committee Final Report. Volume III. Evaluation of Computer Architecture via Test Programs

This volume presents the evaluation of the Computer Family Architecture (CFA) candidate machines via a set of test programs. The measures used to rank the computer architectures were S, the size of the test program, and M and R, two measures designed to estimate the principle components contributing to the nominal execution speed of the architecture. The S, M, and R measurements are discussed in detail in this report, but the following numbers are the most important, summary results of our evaluation process. These results are the composite performance of the candidate architectures for the set of 12 test programs specified by the CFA committee. Each test program was coded from two to four times on each architecture to minimize the effect of programmer variability. Analysis of Variance procedure was used to determine the overall relative performance of the three computer architectures. See also Volume 4, AD-A049 483.