Apr 162010
A central component of my ARM versus x86 report published last week on Bright Side of News* was my miniBench benchmark. For that analysis, I ported miniBench to Linux for both x86 and ARM ISAs.
The ARM project can now be downloaded here. You will need the Code::Blocks IDE to manage the GCC C++ project. Code::Blocks is available from the Ubuntu repositories so it is very easy to install. Of course, you will also need to minimally install gcc, g++ and gdb.
The miniBench x86 project is available here. The x86 Linux binary is here and the ARM binary is here.
I will merge the x86 and ARM projects and upload them to SourceForge shortly.
2 Responses to “ARM miniBench project is ready for download”
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Intel is going to realize very soon the mistake it made in selling off its ARM division to Marvell in 2006. Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Hi Rick,
Before writing the BSN* report, I was skeptical of ARM’s chances against x86. Several years ago when I worked for Centaur I benchmarked an Intel XScale part and compared its performance with a VIA C7. The C7 completely destroyed the Intel ARM derivative, and the C7 is a very simple, scalar, in-order x86 core.
However, the ARM Cortex-A8 was very competitive on integer tests against much stouter x86 opponents. However, ARM floating-point performance must be improved.
For the Intel Atom, power consumption was much higher than the ARM Cortex-A8 even on identical tasks where both chips were performing at the same level.
ARM versus x86 will be a very interesting clash of opposing CPU design philosophies.