http://www.byte.com/bmark/bmark.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
BYTEmarkThis is release 2 of BYTE Magazine's BYTEmark benchmark program (previously known as BYTE's Native Mode Benchmarks). The BYTEmark documentation covers the Native Mode (a.k.a. Algorithm Level) tests; benchmarks designed to expose the capabilities of a system's CPU, FPU, and memory system. -- RG
We originally thought the cause was an unusual interaction between the BYTEmark test and the operating system. It turns out the culprit was the C library routine malloc(), which (on the compilers we used) intermittently returns data not appropriately aligned for the data types the benchmark used. You will find a more complete description of this on page 25 of BYTE's December 1995 issue.
A corrected version of the benchmarks which places a wrapper around malloc() to deal with the alignment problem is IMPORTANT UPDATE: BYTEmark and the P6
BYTE has tracked down the problem with one of the members of the FPU test in the BYTEmark. This problem resulted in our reporting inappropriately low numbers for Intel Pentium Pro machines in our October and November 1995 issues.
Rick Grehan
BYTE Magazine
