Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!van-bc!sl
From: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Single user vs. shared (was Re: Killer Micros and vectorized code)
Message-ID: <270@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: 23 Mar 90 00:20:06 GMT
References: <51771@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <100598@convex.convex.com> <52661@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1990Mar18.023523.4034@ultra.com> <52817@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1990Mar19.220617.26370@world.std.com> <500@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> <268@van-bc.UUCP> <295@emdeng.Dayton.NCR.COM>
Reply-To: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Organization: Wimsey Associates
Lines: 50

In article <295@emdeng.Dayton.NCR.COM> hrich@emdeng.UUCP (George.H.Harry.Rich) writes:
}In article <268@van-bc.UUCP> sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) writes:
}>In article <500@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> ian@sibyl.OZ (Ian Dall) writes:
}>>In article <1990Mar19.220617.26370@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
}>>>
}>
}...
}>Personally I'd much rather get a guaranteed 2% of a KMMM(TM) with the
}>potential of using it *all* when no one else is around than to get 100% of a
}>much smaller machine.
}>
}>-- 
}>Stuart.Lynne@wimsey.bc.ca ubc-cs!van-bc!sl 604-937-7532(voice) 604-939-4768(fax)
}My experience in shared environments is that I can't get that guarenteed
}2%, no matter how good the scheduler is.  There is always maintenance, system
}failure, etc., etc.
}
}My relatively slow desktop workstation takes care of the small job I have
}to get done in the next 10 minutes much more reliably than any shared system;
}in the event of a system failure, or maintenance, both of which occur on
}the desktop, I have redundancy -- i.e. borrow the desktop on the next desk.
}
}I'll have to admit that with a different kind of work pattern, I might prefer
}the really fast shared system, but for most environments availability
}rather than compute power is the issue.

I have two different patterns of use. The first which is also the most usual
is pretty typical, reading news :-), reading mail, editing, running small
jobs, doing miscellanous odd jobs. For this I want my guaranteed response,
but am not worried if some of them take a couple of minutes or so. 

The second pattern is to consume a great deal of CPU/IO resources. For
example checking out a very large source tree, doing a complete make,
generating a release, running test suites, etc. 

While the first type of use can be handled on virtually any environment (>80286)
the second can't unless I'm willing to wait several hours. I don't mind
scheduling it for times I know there are not too many users around. But I'd
much rather that it can be done in minutes than hours.

So I stand by my statement. For my use, 2% is great for daily use. When I 
really need to get a lot of work done I'll come in evenings when I can get
greater than 50% of the KMMM's resources for my own use.

Anyway it will be interesting to see how well this all will work. We're
getting a MIPS R3000 based machine in the next month or so. It's a tad bit
faster the Unix on a 25Mhz 386 box. Maybe I'll even try X windows finally.

-- 
Stuart.Lynne@wimsey.bc.ca ubc-cs!van-bc!sl 604-937-7532(voice) 604-939-4768(fax)