Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!sjsca4!enk
From: enk@sj.ate.slb.com (Edan Kabatchnik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Not All MIPS are Created Equally
Keywords: MIPS
Message-ID: <1989Oct20.190436.22949@sj.ate.slb.com>
Date: 20 Oct 89 19:04:36 GMT
Sender: news@sj.ate.slb.com
Reply-To: enk@slcs.slb.com (Edan Kabatchnik)
Organization: Schlumberger ATE, San Jose, CA
Lines: 18

Net,

     Recently there has been a thread of discussion comparing $/MIPS or MIPS/$
depending on the article.  My question for you is "Why is this a reasonable
means of comparing computing power for the money?"  The reason why MIPS seems
like a problematic unit of comparison to me is that different machines have
different instruction sets.  Some instruction sets are far more complex than
others.  For example, what a Symbolics 3600 and a VAX workstation can do in a
single instruction might require half a dozen instructions or so on a RISC
workstation.

     Could someone shed some light on this for me?

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| "The pain was enough to make a shy, bald buddhist |     Edan Kabatchnik     |
|  reflect and plan a mass murder."                 |    enk@slcs.slb.com     |
|                                   - The Smiths    | enk@wheaties.ai.mit.edu |
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