Performance results page

docs/perf.txt

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+===========
+Performance
+===========
+
+The SPMD programming model that ``ispc`` makes it easy to harness the
+computational power available in SIMD vector units on modern CPUs, while
+its basis in C makes it easy for programmers to adopt and use
+productively.  This page summarizes the performance of ``ispc`` with the
+workloads in the ``examples/`` directory of the ``ispc`` distribution.
+
+These results were measured on a 4-core Apple iMac with a 4-core 3.4GHz
+Intel® Core-i7 processor using the Intel® AVX instruction set.  The basis
+for comparison is a reference C++ implementation compiled with gcc 4.2.1,
+the version distributed with OS X 10.7.2.  (The reference implementation is
+also included in the ``examples/`` directory.)
+
+.. list-table:: Performance of ``ispc`` with a variety of the workloads
+   from the ``examples/`` directory of the ``ispc`` distribution, compared
+   a reference C++ implementation compiled with gcc 4.2.1.
+
+  * - Workload
+    - ``ispc``, 1 core
+    - ``ispc``, 4 cores
+  * - `AOBench`_ (512 x 512 resolution)
+    - 3.99x
+    - 19.32x
+  * - `Binomial Options`_ (128k options)
+    - 7.94x
+    - 33.43x
+  * - `Black-Scholes Options`_ (128k options)
+    - 8.45x
+    - 32.48x
+  * - `Deferred Shading`_ (1280p)
+    - n/a
+    - 23.06x
+  * - `Mandelbrot Set`_
+    - 6.21x
+    - 19.90x
+  * - `Perlin Noise Function`_
+    - 5.37x
+    - n/a
+  * - `Ray Tracer`_ (Sponza dataset)
+    - 3.99x
+    - 19.32x
+  * - `3D Stencil`_
+    - 3.76x
+    - 13.79x
+  * - `Volume Rendering`_
+    - 3.11x
+    - 15.80x
+
+
+.. _AOBench: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/aobench
+.. _Binomial Options: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/options
+.. _Black-Scholes Options: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/options
+.. _Deferred Shading: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/deferred
+.. _Mandelbrot Set: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/mandelbrot_tasks
+.. _Ray Tracer: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/rt
+.. _Perlin Noise Function: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/noise
+.. _3D Stencil: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/stencil
+.. _Volume Rendering: https://github.com/ispc/ispc/tree/master/examples/volume_rendering
+
+
+The following table shows speedups for a number of the examples on a
+2.40GHz, 40-core Intel® Xeon E7-8870 system with the Intel® SSE4
+instruction set, running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise.  Here,
+the serial C/C++ baseline code was compiled with MSVC 2010.
+ 
+.. list-table:: Performance of ``ispc`` with a variety of the workloads
+   from the ``examples/`` directory of the ``ispc`` distribution, on 
+   system with 40 CPU cores.
+
+  * - Workload
+    - ``ispc``, 40 cores
+  * - AOBench (2048 x 2048 resolution)
+    - 182.36x
+  * - Binomial Options (2m options)
+    - 63.85x
+  * - Black-Scholes Options (2m options)
+    - 83.97x
+  * - Ray Tracer (Sponza dataset)
+    - 195.67x
+  * - Volume Rendering
+    - 243.18x
+