[TUHS] benchmark

[TUHS] benchmark

[Folkert van Heusden via TUHS]

Hello,

I wrote a PDP11/70 emulator that I would like to know the relative speed 
(relative to a real PDP11) of.

For that I wrote a benchmark that only (crudely) tests the CPU-speed: no 
i/o (only when it is finished), no mmu.

Anyone willing to give it a try? I tested it on my own emulator and on 
simh.

https://komputilo.nl/emulation/PDP-11/benchmark/

-- 
www.vanheusden.com [1]

Links:
------
[1] http://www.vanheusden.com

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[segaloco via TUHS]

On Tuesday, February 17th, 2026 at 12:38, Folkert van Heusden via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I wrote a PDP11/70 emulator that I would like to know the relative speed
> (relative to a real PDP11) of.
> 
> For that I wrote a benchmark that only (crudely) tests the CPU-speed: no
> i/o (only when it is finished), no mmu.
> 
> Anyone willing to give it a try? I tested it on my own emulator and on
> simh.
> 
> https://komputilo.nl/emulation/PDP-11/benchmark/
> 
> --
> www.vanheusden.com [1]
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.vanheusden.com
> 

Towards the TUHS end, are there any PDP-11 UNIX benchmarks from back in
the day worth comparing with?  I know I've seen benchmark statistics in
BSTJ articles, but I couldn't tell you from memory if the actual code of
the benchmark is available.

Either way, that may be a viable angle to this sort of thing, finding
existing benchmark analyses and applying them to your emulator.

- Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[steve jenkin via TUHS]

In the absence of responses, 
	John Lions started a quick benchmark using ‘dc’.

Could be done at trade shows on many machines, if there was an open console.

I saw a long list of these benchmarks in 1986 - maybe 100 m/c.

Ken McDonnell did a lot of work on benchmarking.
Pyramid hired him to the USA.

Someone who knows the TUHS site / Doco might have a better answer for you.

> On 18 Feb 2026, at 10:35, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Towards the TUHS end, are there any PDP-11 UNIX benchmarks from back in
> the day worth comparing with? 


=============

<https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix.wizards/1988-September/021320.html>

BENCHMARKING SUITES

The following benchmark suites are available. 
In some cases, I haven't yet determined how to obtain the item.

* Monash University (MUSBUS) benchmark suite, which has been posted to Usenet in comp.sources.unix. 
This suite was authored by Ken J. McDonnell, now with Pyramid Technology: kenj at pyrnova.pyramid.com. 
It may be obtained from uunet.uu.net via anonymous ftp, or via the archive server at uunet!netlib. 
The 5.0 version is in comp.sources.unix/volume11/musbus;

=============

Vol V No 1 AUUGN, 1984
<https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V05.1.pdf>
pg 44

Tim Long: Quick Benchmarks of the Machines on Display

A simple cpu-bound benchmark was run on each of the machines on display.

The benchmark was "echo 99k2vp8opq I /bin/time dc > /dev/null’.
 It uses dc (the desk calculator) to calculate the square root of 2 to 99 decimal places,
and to "print" the result in decimal and then in octal.

=============

Vol 7 No 6 AUUGN, April 1987
<https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V07.6.pdf>

pg 12
Taking Performance Evaluation out of the "Stone Age"
Ken J. McDonell

pg 16 
Table 1: MUSBUS diagnostic tests.


=============

--

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[Erik E. Fair via TUHS]

See https://netlib.org/performance/html/dhrystone.data.col0.html

There are Dhrystone benchmarks for the PDP-11/70 & 11/34 listed therein, alongside many others.

	Erik

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

The SPEC suite is well regarded and there are many results available on the
main website. However the complete suite costs money. But some parts are
FOSS and available at https://spec.cs.miami.edu/sources/

Larry’s lmbench https://lmbench.sourceforge.net/whatis_lmbench.html Is well
known and a lot more drystone useful than simple things like drystone.

Some others to consider are UnixBench, Bonnie++, foo, iozone. These tools
measure metrics like context switching, process creation, file system
throughput, and data transfer rates.
[image: Jetstor]Jetstor +4

   - *System & CPU Benchmarks:*
      - *UnixBench:* A classic benchmark for testing CPU, memory, and file
      system performance.
      - *Phoronix Test Suite:* An comprehensive, open-source testing and
      benchmarking platform for Linux and other operating systems.
      - *Hardinfo:* Provides detailed system information and basic
      benchmarks.
      - *Dhrystone/Whetstone:* Tests for integer and floating-point CPU
      performance.
   - *Disk I/O & Filesystem Benchmarks:*
      - *Bonnie++:* Tests file system performance, such as file creation
      and deletion.
      - *IOzone:* Measures filesystem performance across various
      operations, including read/write speeds.
      - *fio:* A flexible tool for stress-testing storage, often used for
      benchmarking SSDs and virtual hardware.
   - *Networking & Other Benchmarks:*
      - *Iperf/Netpipe:* Often used within clusters to measure network
      throughput.
      - *AIM7:* Used to measure the performance of multiuser/shared systems.




One other thought. You might want to try to run whichever suite you pick
against a known baseline of real hardware.  I believe SDF-ICM has Miss
Piggy available again on the Internet. This system is an 11/70 that was the
original development system at Microsoft, but I’m not sure what OS they
have running on it.



Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual


On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 3:38 PM Folkert van Heusden via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I wrote a PDP11/70 emulator that I would like to know the relative speed
> (relative to a real PDP11) of.
>
> For that I wrote a benchmark that only (crudely) tests the CPU-speed: no
> i/o (only when it is finished), no mmu.
>
> Anyone willing to give it a try? I tested it on my own emulator and on
> simh.
>
> https://komputilo.nl/emulation/PDP-11/benchmark/
>
> --
> www.vanheusden.com [1]
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.vanheusden.com
>

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[Larry McVoy via TUHS]

I have a version that deals with all the 64 bit issues that I need to post.
It's pretty surprising how well lmbench has held up.  The GNU people ripped
off mhz because of course they did.

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 11:43:43PM -0500, Clem Cole via TUHS wrote:
> The SPEC suite is well regarded and there are many results available on the
> main website. However the complete suite costs money. But some parts are
> FOSS and available at https://spec.cs.miami.edu/sources/
> 
> Larry???s lmbench https://lmbench.sourceforge.net/whatis_lmbench.html Is well
> known and a lot more drystone useful than simple things like drystone.
> 
> Some others to consider are UnixBench, Bonnie++, foo, iozone. These tools
> measure metrics like context switching, process creation, file system
> throughput, and data transfer rates.
> [image: Jetstor]Jetstor +4
> 
>    - *System & CPU Benchmarks:*
>       - *UnixBench:* A classic benchmark for testing CPU, memory, and file
>       system performance.
>       - *Phoronix Test Suite:* An comprehensive, open-source testing and
>       benchmarking platform for Linux and other operating systems.
>       - *Hardinfo:* Provides detailed system information and basic
>       benchmarks.
>       - *Dhrystone/Whetstone:* Tests for integer and floating-point CPU
>       performance.
>    - *Disk I/O & Filesystem Benchmarks:*
>       - *Bonnie++:* Tests file system performance, such as file creation
>       and deletion.
>       - *IOzone:* Measures filesystem performance across various
>       operations, including read/write speeds.
>       - *fio:* A flexible tool for stress-testing storage, often used for
>       benchmarking SSDs and virtual hardware.
>    - *Networking & Other Benchmarks:*
>       - *Iperf/Netpipe:* Often used within clusters to measure network
>       throughput.
>       - *AIM7:* Used to measure the performance of multiuser/shared systems.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One other thought. You might want to try to run whichever suite you pick
> against a known baseline of real hardware.  I believe SDF-ICM has Miss
> Piggy available again on the Internet. This system is an 11/70 that was the
> original development system at Microsoft, but I???m not sure what OS they
> have running on it.
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 3:38???PM Folkert van Heusden via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > I wrote a PDP11/70 emulator that I would like to know the relative speed
> > (relative to a real PDP11) of.
> >
> > For that I wrote a benchmark that only (crudely) tests the CPU-speed: no
> > i/o (only when it is finished), no mmu.
> >
> > Anyone willing to give it a try? I tested it on my own emulator and on
> > simh.
> >
> > https://komputilo.nl/emulation/PDP-11/benchmark/
> >
> > --
> > www.vanheusden.com [1]
> >
> > Links:
> > ------
> > [1] http://www.vanheusden.com
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[Folkert van Heusden via TUHS]

Hi,

Yes, but I wanted to solely test the cpu and also be independent from an 
OS, so bare metal. So that's why I made my version.

I also doubt that most of the benchmarks mentioned there will run on a 
regular pdp11?

regards

On 2026-02-18 05:43, Clem Cole wrote:

> The SPEC suite is well regarded and there are many results available on 
> the main website. However the complete suite costs money. But some 
> parts are FOSS and available at https://spec.cs.miami.edu/sources/
> 
> Larry's lmbench https://lmbench.sourceforge.net/whatis_lmbench.html Is 
> well known and a lot more drystone useful than simple things like 
> drystone.
> 
> Some others to consider are UnixBench, Bonnie++, foo, iozone. These 
> tools measure metrics like context switching, process creation, file 
> system throughput, and data transfer rates.
> Jetstor +4
> 
> * System & CPU Benchmarks:
> 
> * UnixBench: A classic benchmark for testing CPU, memory, and file 
> system performance.
> * Phoronix Test Suite: An comprehensive, open-source testing and 
> benchmarking platform for Linux and other operating systems.
> * Hardinfo: Provides detailed system information and basic benchmarks.
> * Dhrystone/Whetstone: Tests for integer and floating-point CPU 
> performance.
> 
> * Disk I/O & Filesystem Benchmarks:
> 
> * Bonnie++: Tests file system performance, such as file creation and 
> deletion.
> * IOzone: Measures filesystem performance across various operations, 
> including read/write speeds.
> * fio: A flexible tool for stress-testing storage, often used for 
> benchmarking SSDs and virtual hardware.
> 
> * Networking & Other Benchmarks:
> 
> * Iperf/Netpipe: Often used within clusters to measure network 
> throughput.
> * AIM7: Used to measure the performance of multiuser/shared systems.
> 
> One other thought. You might want to try to run whichever suite you 
> pick against a known baseline of real hardware.  I believe SDF-ICM has 
> Miss Piggy available again on the Internet. This system is an 11/70 
> that was the original development system at Microsoft, but I'm not sure 
> what OS they have running on it.
> 
> Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
> 
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 3:38 PM Folkert van Heusden via TUHS 
> <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I wrote a PDP11/70 emulator that I would like to know the relative 
>> speed
>> (relative to a real PDP11) of.
>> 
>> For that I wrote a benchmark that only (crudely) tests the CPU-speed: 
>> no
>> i/o (only when it is finished), no mmu.
>> 
>> Anyone willing to give it a try? I tested it on my own emulator and on
>> simh.
>> 
>> https://komputilo.nl/emulation/PDP-11/benchmark/
>> 
>> --
>> www.vanheusden.com [1] [1]
>> 
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://www.vanheusden.com

-- 
www.vanheusden.com [1]

Links:
------
[1] http://www.vanheusden.com

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[Luther Johnson via TUHS]

It sounds like you want something more synthetic, and compute-bound, 
perhaps like the EEMBC CoreMark, if dhrystone and whetstone seem too 
artificial. Now CoreMark wasn't around in the olden days of early UNIX 
on a PDP-11/70, but there are some FPGA projects out there that 
implement PDP-11's ... like wfjm's w11 ( https://wfjm.github.io/home/w11 
). You could get someone to run a benchmark on one of these FPGA 
11/70's, to get a baseline, then run it on your emulator, to get an idea 
of how where you are, compared to "real hardware" ... and the authors of 
FPGA PDP-11 implementations probably have a fair idea of where their 
implementations stand with respect to original 11's ... and there are 
still some PDP-11's out there, a few years ago there was a company that 
still built them, fairly similar to the originals ... anyhow just some 
ideas to chew on ...

On 02/17/2026 11:42 PM, Folkert van Heusden via TUHS wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Yes, but I wanted to solely test the cpu and also be independent from 
> an OS, so bare metal. So that's why I made my version.
>
> I also doubt that most of the benchmarks mentioned there will run on a 
> regular pdp11?
>
> regards
>
> On 2026-02-18 05:43, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>> The SPEC suite is well regarded and there are many results available 
>> on the main website. However the complete suite costs money. But some 
>> parts are FOSS and available at https://spec.cs.miami.edu/sources/
>>
>> Larry's lmbench https://lmbench.sourceforge.net/whatis_lmbench.html 
>> Is well known and a lot more drystone useful than simple things like 
>> drystone.
>>
>> Some others to consider are UnixBench, Bonnie++, foo, iozone. These 
>> tools measure metrics like context switching, process creation, file 
>> system throughput, and data transfer rates.
>> Jetstor +4
>>
>> * System & CPU Benchmarks:
>>
>> * UnixBench: A classic benchmark for testing CPU, memory, and file 
>> system performance.
>> * Phoronix Test Suite: An comprehensive, open-source testing and 
>> benchmarking platform for Linux and other operating systems.
>> * Hardinfo: Provides detailed system information and basic benchmarks.
>> * Dhrystone/Whetstone: Tests for integer and floating-point CPU 
>> performance.
>>
>> * Disk I/O & Filesystem Benchmarks:
>>
>> * Bonnie++: Tests file system performance, such as file creation and 
>> deletion.
>> * IOzone: Measures filesystem performance across various operations, 
>> including read/write speeds.
>> * fio: A flexible tool for stress-testing storage, often used for 
>> benchmarking SSDs and virtual hardware.
>>
>> * Networking & Other Benchmarks:
>>
>> * Iperf/Netpipe: Often used within clusters to measure network 
>> throughput.
>> * AIM7: Used to measure the performance of multiuser/shared systems.
>>
>> One other thought. You might want to try to run whichever suite you 
>> pick against a known baseline of real hardware.  I believe SDF-ICM 
>> has Miss Piggy available again on the Internet. This system is an 
>> 11/70 that was the original development system at Microsoft, but I'm 
>> not sure what OS they have running on it.
>>
>> Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 3:38 PM Folkert van Heusden via TUHS 
>> <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I wrote a PDP11/70 emulator that I would like to know the relative 
>>> speed
>>> (relative to a real PDP11) of.
>>>
>>> For that I wrote a benchmark that only (crudely) tests the 
>>> CPU-speed: no
>>> i/o (only when it is finished), no mmu.
>>>
>>> Anyone willing to give it a try? I tested it on my own emulator and on
>>> simh.
>>>
>>> https://komputilo.nl/emulation/PDP-11/benchmark/
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> www.vanheusden.com [1] [1]
>>>
>>> Links:
>>> ------
>>> [1] http://www.vanheusden.com
>

[TUHS] Re: benchmark

[Pete Wright via TUHS]

On 2/17/26 20:50, Larry McVoy via TUHS wrote:
> I have a version that deals with all the 64 bit issues that I need to post.
> It's pretty surprising how well lmbench has held up.  The GNU people ripped
> off mhz because of course they did.
> 

kinda OT but i always wanted to thank you for lmdd and lmbench Larry. 
we relied heavily on those tools early in my carrier building high-rez 
video playback suites for film/vfx studios.  i remember my mentor at the 
time teaching me about optimal track layout, and using only the outer 
tracks on disks to achieve sustained throughput, using lmdd.  they also 
uncovered more than a few bugs on irix and linux for us.

so...thanks!

-pete

-- 
Pete Wright
pete@nomadlogic.org

[TUHS] Miss Piggy OS

[Adam Thornton via TUHS]

Back before the catastrophe, Miss Piggy was running v7 Unix, I think.  I
would suspect it's still the same.

Adam

On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 1:22 AM Clem Cole via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

>
> One other thought. You might want to try to run whichever suite you pick
> against a known baseline of real hardware.  I believe SDF-ICM has Miss
> Piggy available again on the Internet. This system is an 11/70 that was the
> original development system at Microsoft, but I’m not sure what OS they
> have running on it.
>
>

[TUHS] Re: Miss Piggy OS

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

I am of the same belief. I’ll try logging in later today.

Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual


On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 12:44 PM Adam Thornton via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
wrote:

> Back before the catastrophe, Miss Piggy was running v7 Unix, I think.  I
> would suspect it's still the same.
>
> Adam
>
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 1:22 AM Clem Cole via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > One other thought. You might want to try to run whichever suite you pick
> > against a known baseline of real hardware.  I believe SDF-ICM has Miss
> > Piggy available again on the Internet. This system is an 11/70 that was
> the
> > original development system at Microsoft, but I’m not sure what OS they
> > have running on it.
> >
> >
>

[TUHS] Re: Miss Piggy OS

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

I checked and our memory is correct. Miss Piggy is running a V7 flavor.

Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual


On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 1:03 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> I am of the same belief. I’ll try logging in later today.
>
> Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 12:44 PM Adam Thornton via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Back before the catastrophe, Miss Piggy was running v7 Unix, I think.  I
>> would suspect it's still the same.
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 1:22 AM Clem Cole via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > One other thought. You might want to try to run whichever suite you pick
>> > against a known baseline of real hardware.  I believe SDF-ICM has Miss
>> > Piggy available again on the Internet. This system is an 11/70 that was
>> the
>> > original development system at Microsoft, but I’m not sure what OS they
>> > have running on it.
>> >
>> >
>>
>