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From: aarons@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: DECStation vs. SPARCstation, need help!
Message-ID: <1094@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Jun 89 12:42:22 GMT
References: <486@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de>
Organization: School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, Sussex Univ. UK
Lines: 50

gengenba@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de (Michael Gengenbach) writes:

> Hi folks,
>
> I know, that this question could mean war, but we really need some
> decision support.
[.......]

>     - DECStation 3100
>     - SPARCstation 1 or SPARCstation 330
[........]
>    - what do you think about RISC vs. CISC in performance of
>      AI-applications (Lisp, Prolog, Databases, image-processing),
>      i.e. symbolic computation?
Our (informal) comparisons between Sun3/280 and Sun4/260 running
Poplog (see below) show that on balance the latter is between 1.5
and 2 times faster. On simple Poplog Prolog tests the Sun4 is fairly
consistently around twice as fast. But integer multiplication (e.g.
factorial(1000)) is slightly faster on Sun3/280! (On Sun386i it was
faster still, though other things were slower.)

I have not yet tried the M68030-based Suns.

My impression is that overall, at present, RISC gives you a better
price/performance ratio.

>    - can one trust in MIPS-ratings (14 for DECStation, 12.5 SPARCstation 1)?
The ratios we found between Sun3/280 and Sun4/260 showed that MIPS
ratings are at best a very rough guide, and depend on your program.

[.....]
>    - how about the software availability, especially AI software?
Our Poplog system (providing Prolog, Common Lisp, Pop-11, ML) is
currently available on SPARC machines. It is possible that it will be
available on DECstation, but not yet certain, and definitely not
before the end of this year.

>
>    Michael

Aaron Sloman,
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences,
Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England
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