why nasm ? quality of code generated by 'nasm' vs GNU 'as'

Hi,

I am curious to know what were the reasons on the basis
of which 'nasm' was chosen for jnode?

Is there any comparison done on the quality of code generated
by 'nasm' vs GNU 'as' ?

I went through the 'nasm' documentation and found two points:
. easy syntax
. error checking

However, I could not find any claims or statements about:
. quality of code generated
. optimisations if any
. something that 'nasm' does which GNU 'as' cannot/doesnot do.

This is neither a troll nor flame. However, I am really interested
in the reasons.

Thanks for your time in advance.

Reasons

The reasons we're very simple; i knew nasm and the syntax that was used for many years and i was (and am) not familiar with the as syntax.

Ewout