... and we have a winner ...

Way way back, long long ago, I used mdbnch benchmark to test machines. I was amazed when SGI’s R8k got this done in under 20 seconds. The sub 15 second R10/R12k results were awesome. The sub 10 second Alpha results were amazing. That was about a decade ago. For a while, Opterons and Xeons have been in the 2-3 second range. Some recent chips were in the 1.4 second range. I always wondered when we would crack one second.

[landman@pegasus-i5482 mdbnch]$ ./new.x
      MDBNCH: A MOLECULAR DYNAMICS BENCHMARK, VERSION OF DECEMBER 17, 1988
 *******************************************************************************
 MD BENCHMARK FOR   256 PARTICLES, 1000 STEPS.
 O(N**2) BRUTE FORCE LIST FORMATION EVERY 10 WITH SKIN = 1.00
 PAIR CORRELATION FUNCTION NOT COMPUTED
...
 *******************************************************************************
 COMPLETE BENCHMARK EXECUTION TIME :    0.870000 CP SECONDS.

Intel 5482. Fast box. Yeah, I am impressed. This benchmark is mostly in cache these days, but I am still pretty impressed.