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From: rcfische@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Raymond C. Fischer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Not All MIPS are Created Equally
Keywords: MIPS
Message-ID: <1989Oct21.051814.13919@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 21 Oct 89 05:18:14 GMT
References: <1989Oct20.190436.22949@sj.ate.slb.com>
Reply-To: rcfische@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Raymond C. Fischer)
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 23

In article <1989Oct20.190436.22949@sj.ate.slb.com> enk@slcs.slb.com (Edan Kabatchnik) writes:
>     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?

Yup.  90% marketing hype.  MIPS is usually used to impress people who
think it actually means something.  To be fair, there are a few cases
where it is meaningful.  The first is when your comparing two computers
that use the same instruction set (as in two different models of VAXes)
or when you're approximating to a standard instruction set (as in 4 VAX MIPS).
You may notice that MIPS is often used when talking about RISC processors.
Guess which kind this usage of MIPS is?


Ray Fischer
rcfische@polyslo.calpoly.edu