Windows veteran benchmarks 47 years of PCs, finds M2 Mac Pro 200,000x faster than PDP-11

A Journey Through Computing Power: A Windows Veteran's 47-Year Benchmark Odyssey

Imagine a seasoned tech veteran, someone who practically lived through the digital revolution, meticulously charting the astronomical leap in computing performance over nearly five decades. That's precisely what Dave W. Plummer, a name synonymous with the development of Windows' Task Manager and other foundational applications, has achieved in his personal lab. His ambitious project involved testing a curated collection of 25 computers, spanning from the era of the PDP-11/34 in the 1970s to the cutting-edge Mac Pro powered by Apple's M2 Ultra chip.

The Dhrystone Benchmark: A Universal Yardstick

At the heart of Plummer's groundbreaking experiment lies the Dhrystone 2.2 benchmark. He selected this particular tool for its remarkable compatibility, allowing it to run seamlessly across vastly different architectures and operating systems. This ensured a level playing field for his diverse lineup of hardware. The results, as you might expect, are nothing short of astonishing. The Mac Pro M2 Ultra, a titan of modern computing, has proven to be a staggering 200,000 times faster than the humble PDP-11/34 of the 1970s. Plummer himself noted that this colossal disparity could have been even greater had the benchmark been designed to leverage multi-threading, a cornerstone of contemporary processing power.

From PDP-11 to M2 Ultra: A Statistical Revelation

Plummer meticulously compiled his findings into a comprehensive table, painting a vivid picture of computing evolution. The PDP-11/34 anchors the bottom of this performance spectrum, scoring a modest 240 points. In stark contrast, the Mac Pro M2 Ultra commands an awe-inspiring 47,808,764 points. The table also spotlights other significant milestones, including the Amiga 500, which, despite its nostalgic charm, occupies a penultimate position with 1,000 points. The data clearly illustrates the dramatic advancements from early Intel i486 processors to multiple generations of Pentium, showcasing a tenfold increase in processing power for Intel chips within a single decade – from 30,000 to 2.5 million points. Furthermore, Plummer's work highlights Apple's own impressive performance trajectory, particularly the leap from Motorola 680X0 processors to the PowerPC architecture. Even a modern, affordable device like the Raspberry Pi 4B, clocking in at nearly 10 million points, demonstrates a fourfold performance advantage over the Pentium 4. The sheer computational might of contemporary processors like the 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX and the 24-core M2 Ultra in the Mac Pro is truly mind-boggling.

The Genesis of a Grand Experiment

Plummer’s motivation stemmed from a deep-seated curiosity: “I restore old computers, and I'm always interested in how their performance in a classic benchmark compares to modern PCs. A hundred times faster? A thousand? A million? Here’s the data,” he explained on his X (formerly Twitter) page. He engineered the Dhrystone test in K&R C, ensuring its universality across his diverse collection. The source code for this benchmark is now publicly available on GitHub, empowering others to replicate his tests and compare their own systems. Plummer has thoughtfully optimized the code for 2.9 BSD on PDP-11 systems, while also making it compilable on modern machines for direct comparison.

Unveiling Performance Nuances

A key observation from Plummer's research is that for systems newer than the Intel i486, the Dhrystone program largely resides within the CPU's cache. This phenomenon contributes significantly to the performance boosts observed over different eras. However, the benchmark, by its nature, doesn't fully exploit the capabilities of modern processors. It doesn't utilize advanced instruction sets like AVX-512, which are designed to dramatically accelerate complex computations. Consequently, the Dhrystone test doesn't delve into other critical performance bottlenecks in contemporary systems, such as memory bandwidth or the intricacies of multi-level cache performance. Despite its humble position in Plummer's rankings, it's fascinating to note that the Amiga 500, with its 7.16 MHz 68000 processor, can still load and open a text editor faster than many modern machines – a testament to efficient software design and the diminishing impact of raw speed for certain tasks.