Re: 1985 machine spec...

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <20020123222051.08323.00000271@mb-fi.aol.com>,
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
 
> If address arithmetic is a dominant part of the execution of an
> assembler, as opposed to text scanning and hashing/table lookup,
> then something is awry.  The fact that going to native arithmetic
> instead of interpretive arithmetic made a 5:1 speed difference is
> remarkable--either the assembler is using Sweet-16 _way_ too
> much, or Sweet-16 is 50 times slower than simple, in-line 16-bit
> operations.
 
It's most likely the latter -- I remember that Sweet-16 operations
were somewhat like 20 times slower than corresponding in-line 8-bit
operations, and 16-bit operations ought to be faster than 8-bit
operations dealing with 16-bit quantities.
 
The S-C Assembler became quite noticeably faster in assembling when
it went from version 3.2 to version 4.0.  Version 3.2 made heavy use
of Sweet-16, while version 4.0 had replaced that with the
corresponding native 6502 operations - and this happened years before
the 65802 appeared.
 
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