$ perl createblinker.pl 500000 -900000 100 >x.tmp 2>y.tmp

$ time /opt/perl-5.26.0/bin/perl -I. tbench1.pl x.tmp 2
cell count at start = 1500000
run benchmark for 2 ticks
cell count at end = 1500000
time taken: 1 secs

real  0m3.618s
user  0m3.363s
sys   0m0.235s