Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!comp.vuw.ac.nz!dsiramd!ray
From: ray@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz (Ray Brownrigg)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Multiuser benchmarks
Keywords: Benchmarks, RISC, SPARC, MIPS, Multi-user
Message-ID: <377@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz>
Date: 19 Jun 89 21:31:43 GMT
Reply-To: ray@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz (Ray Brownrigg)
Organization: DSIR Applied Mathematics Division, Wellington, NZ
Lines: 49

Having been reading this group for just a few weeks now, I suspect I
might have just missed discussions on some or all of the following. If
so I would appreciate mail summarising the findings. Otherwise, please
e-mail me and I will summarise. 

1) Recent benchmarking discussions, particularly the SPARC/MIPS and
DS3100/M-120 comparisons have mostly failed to mention multi-user
capabilities, although I realise the context switching, register
architecture, and cache buffering threads may have resulted from an
initial discussion of this topic. Does anyone have experience of the
relative multi-user performance of the SS1 vs SS330 vs RC2030 vs M-120,
with say VAX/780 (or MVII) as a reference? I realise this may well be
very environment dependent, but in a general scientific/academic
environment it is basically impossible to "take your application to a
sample system and use that as YOUR benchmark", when your 'application'
is say 4 scientists out of a pool of 20, wanting to do interactive
editing, compiling, executions, as well as other package-based
applications. This of course leads to:

2) What standard benchmarks purport to give a feel for the multiuser
capabilities of a system? I understand the MUSBUS and AIM benchmarks may
well do this, but I do not have much detailed information on the
benchmarks, and even less information (i.e. none) on results for the
above-mentioned systems. My specific interest is in making comparisons
between VAX/780 (or MVII) running VMS and a small RISC workstation (say
SS1 or RC2030).  I note that the MIPS Performance Brief Issue 3.8 (June
1989) does not mention either of these tests. 

Now given this is comp.arch, my real question is the following:

3) Are there any *architectural* reasons for being wary of potential
multi-user performance of say a SPARCstation 1, or am I justified in
saying:
	'Well, if you have 12 VUPs, then the system should be capable of
	delivering (say) 2 VUPs to each of 6 users, that should be enough
	to convince them to move from sharing a MicroVAX II under VMS.'?

For example, I realise that to give each user 2 VUPs, then each user
should have something like 4 (or 6, or 8, depending on the applications
used) megabytes of memory, and 48 Mb is not possible on SS1 yet, but
would a 16Mb system be significantly insufficient (given the statistical
benefits of multiplicity)? 

Please e-mail any data and I will summarise. 
-- 
Ray Brownrigg			domain: ray@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz
Applied Maths Div, DSIR		ACSnet:	ray@dsiramd.nz[@munnari]
PO Box 1335			System:	OLIVETTI/AT&T 3B2/400B+, System V R3.0
Wellington, New Zealand			"unx -rules -OK"