Loader 0% 25% 50% 75% Sparkle 4-4-4-4 5-4-4-4 7-4-4-4 7-4-4-4 Spindle default default default default Krill 4-4-4-4 5-4-4-4 7-7-7-7 11-10-10-10 Bitfire 5-5-5-5 6-6-6-6 9-9-9-9 6-6-6-6 BoozeLoader 4-4-4-4 5-5-5-5 7-7-7-7 11-11-11-11
Also, I really hope no one takes my benchmark as a personal attack. :)
But after investigating a little, it seems like it does not quite max out the performance of at least my loader, and in general does not illustrate more different scenarios than just CPU available to the loader.
Firstly, most files are rather small (2 tracks or so - if you do that in a demo, you don't care so much for speed anyways), which makes opening a file (including finding and loading the first block, in my case) pretty dominant in the overall cost and reduces the impact of sustained throughput. This puts block-based compression (rather than stream-based) and fixed/known layout at an advantage.
Then, the faster tracks tend to be the upper tracks 18+ (native interleave 3, not 4, in my case), and so the files should end at track 35 rather than start at track 1, if maximum speed is to be the goal.
The tool to create the images seems a tad suspicious to me (or the used parameters). It seems to save files with correct CBM DOS interleaving behaviour, but puts every first file block on a new track to sector 1 rather than 0.
does not illustrate more different scenarios than just CPU available to the loader.
I agree, this was the sole purpose of this benchmark as stated my first post. :)
And yet, it fixes all other variables, not allowing for comparison of those, even if the goal were to compare speed vs. CPU again, but in another scenario (such as having big files only).
Not sure what you mean by backward compatibility. Is it to the benchmark of 5 years ago, to get comparable numbers with that? I'd say that's a different benchmark, and numbers shall only be compared within one benchmark.
And again, having exactly one benchmark isn't so feasible, you'll make everyone optimise their tools for that and make people assume that these numbers would reflect every scenario.
