Programming Benchmarks: PM 18-3 Problem Set Coded on Small and Medium Processors

This document, a 1970 technical memorandum, reports on the performance of the proposed PDP-K processor across a set of five standard benchmark problems originally defined for mini-computers. The results, compared against several contemporary systems (including PDP-15, PDP-10, PDP-11, and Sigma series), highlight the efficiency of the PDP-K's instruction set, specifically the 'COMPARE WITH LIMITS', 'REPEAT', and 'CHANGE COUNTER, TEST AND JUMP' instructions. The report emphasizes that these benchmarks were used to judge the utility of instruction sets rather than compare whole computer systems directly, and it acknowledges that these findings are intended for further iteration as the project develops.