Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!gatech!prism!vsserv!stat!stat.fsu.edu!mccalpin From: mccalpin@masig3.masig3.ocean.fsu.edu (John D. McCalpin) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: NeXT vs Sun3 Message-ID: Date: 21 Oct 89 17:24:15 GMT References: <925@abvax.UUCP> <13246@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <17434@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <191@med.Stanford.EDU> Sender: news@stat.fsu.edu Organization: Supercomputer Computations Research Institute Lines: 28 In article <191@med.Stanford.EDU> rick@hanauma.UUCP (Richard Ottolini) writes: >FORTRAN is easier to implement some types of number crunching, and NeXT >doesn't offer it yet. I'm sure that 1000 people will also post this, but.... Absoft has been shipping FORTRAN for the NeXT for some time. The compiler works pretty well, and the NeXT outperforms the Sun-3 machines at any available clock rate --- provided the Sun-3 does not have the Weitek fpa board! If you want to run numeric-intensive C programs, the NeXT is MUCH faster than a 68881-equipped Sun-3, though the Sun-3 performance can be much enhanced by installing GNU C to replace the standard Sun C compiler. Interestingly enough, the GNU compiler on the NeXT typically runs floating-point intensive codes *faster than FORTRAN*. This is the only machine that I know of that can make that claim. It says very good things about the GNU C optimizer. One could interpret it to say bad things about the Absoft FORTRAN compiler, but I have found that the Absoft compiler actually optimizes pretty well --- almost as well as the Sun-3 f77 compiler with full optimization. -- John D. McCalpin - mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu mccalpin@scri1.scri.fsu.edu mccalpin@delocn.udel.edu