On 5 Dec 2009 at 7:43, Geoff Oltmans wrote:
I was really more interested in the overall
performance gains per
clock cycle over the 8088... IIRC it's supposed to be between 10-20%
faster or something like that.
Depends on the instruction mix--some things are much faster; others
not so much. I may still have some benchmark data in my V20 file
that sheds some additional light if you're curious.
I do recall that the gain was perhaps barely noticeable on a standard
IBM 5160 and gave ridiculous indication on the Landmark SPEED test.
The most significant benefit was that the V20 supports all of the non-
privileged 80286 instructions, expanding the software possibilities a
bit for old 8-bit PCs.
The V20 could be had in higher-speed versions (16MHz?) than the Intel
8088.
Although the NEC V-series extended up through the V70, only the V20
and V30 parts were pin-compatible with the Intel 8088 and 8086. Many
other members of the V series contain some innovative features.
--Chuck