AVR-Chat

If we're going to talk about MIPs for different MCUs, we should make 
some kind of effort to talk about the same metric and not just rely 
on the manufacturer's specification. This is often just the clock 
frequency divided by the number of cycles needed by the smallest 
instruction.

I have made available on my Web site a modified version of the 
Dhrystone benchmark that runs on MCUs with as little as 2kbytes of 
RAM. Click on "Links and Resources" at the bottom of any page.

Although I have only collected data for three MCUs, the AVR does 
indeed come out on top in terms of Dhrystone MIPs per MHz of clock 
rate. The MSP430 is close behind (thanks to Paul Curtis for the 
measurement) with the ZiLOG Z8 Encore! basically arriving after the 
crowd and judges have already gone home.

If anyone could contribute measurements for other MCU families I 
would appreciate it and give you the credit. Obviously the PIC is the 
most glaring omission.

Graham.
http://www.ecrostech.com