Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!brunix!rca
From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Whtat's the big picture for the 040 NeXT cube?
Keywords: NeXT cube 040
Message-ID: <50939@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 24 Sep 90 20:59:41 GMT
References: <1558@wet.UUCP>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
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Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 69

In article <1558@wet.UUCP> smiller@wet.UUCP (Gregory Shane Miller) writes:

>         Byte's November 1988 issue (review on original cube) quotes
>         Jobs writing: "'MIPS is only one-third of the equation;
>         sustained system throughput is the key'".

This is when byte still was a bit more usefull than it is today

>         So you can imagine how depressed and (frankly) confused I was
>         when in the March 1990 issue of Byte I find the new UNIX
>         benchmarks which includes times from a (030) NeXT machine:
>
>              Everex i386/33 Mhz SCO Xenix 2.3.1: Cum. Index 6.00
>              NeXT                              : Cum. Index 3.54
>              DEC3100                           : Cum. Index 11.12
>              HP370                             : Cum. Index 5.37

The problem with this tests are many. As far as I know they used the
base version of a NeXT for these tests. This means only 8 MByte Ram.
The NeXT becomes about twice as fast with more memory. After all a lot
of the memory is used for the window system.
2nd they tested UNIX features what ever this means. So they tried to
compare a UNIX-PC that is supposed to run a couple of terminals in
text mode with a graphics oriented workstations called NeXT and
another one called DEC3100. Only that the DEC didn't use postscript.
Now immagine their nice tests producing output: one blasts it on a
80x25 character display, another one uses X and the NeXT reders the
output in PstScript. What a fair contest... 
Guess how much was lost there! If they has tried the same benchmarks
with standard terminals hooked up to each of the machines, no X or
NeXTStep running, then we might have gotten results that come closer
to reality. But, what do you expect from byte? It's only a shame that
UnixWorld had a lot of bad errors in their review, too.

>         [2] Given a 68030 and a 68040 of same speed, is the 040
>             really faster?  If so, by how much?  Does the 040

According to Motorola the 68040 an average instruction in 1.3 clock
cycles. This means about 20 MIPS at 25 MHz clock. The 68040 is about
2-4 times faster than the 68030 on integer ops. and about 3-10 faster
than the 68882 on floating point ops.

>             BTW: September 1990 Unix World has this to say:
>
>                "At this point, I see administering to a NeXT - or a
>                 network of NeXTs - as a big problem for non-technical
>                 users."

This is one of the bad errors in this review. They didn't mention the
NetInfoManager, nor did they realize that with niload and nidump it is
possible to use all the conventional shell scripts for admin.
purposes. But then, administering of a UNIX-network never was for
non-tecnical users. From time to time you have to look after certain
files...
But NeXT did a good job anyway. Now with the NetInfoKit it is probably
even easier to create administarion Tools.

>         What about gentlemen? Does the 040 box have the same throughput?

The 'old' NeXT wasn't as bad a people said, but I would be really
surprised if the new ones weren't still a lot better


Ronald

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man."  Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet