Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!well!yoo
From: yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: SPARCstation 2 --> workstation wars
Message-ID: <21261@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 20 Oct 90 18:41:08 GMT
References: <1990Oct20.025628.11602@midway.uchicago.edu> <1990Oct20.050207.1910@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 28



Why all this talk about about Mac/NeXT/Sun comparisons when NeXT 2.0 has
been announced and should be three to four times faster than the old
NeXT?  Anyone worried about the old NeXT's performance will upgrade to
2.0.  Yes, the old NeXT was slow, but the new NeXTs are speed demons.
I've had a chance to play with them.  

Here are some facts.  The Mac IIfx runs at 7-8 Mips.  The Sun SLC at 12-13
Mips.  The Sparc+ at 15-16 Mips.  The 040 NeXTs are at 15 Mips (or 20 if
you believe Motorola).  The 040 NeXTs do 2.5-3 MFLOPS.  A Mathematica
benchmark showed that the NeXTs were faster in this area than the Suns and
several times faster than any of the Macs.

In terms of program loading, the 2.0 software alone (without the 040 chip)
improves performance by a factor of 2 or 3. In terms of program execution,
because of the vastly improved floating point performance, postscript is
fast and, thus, drawing on screen is fast.  Some PostScript routines also
have been optimized.  xyshow, for instance, is an order of magnitude faster
on the new NeXTs.  

My general impression is that the new NeXTs are significantly faster than
any Mac.  They are comparable to the Sun.  And in the one true benchmark that
counts (i.e., how much work can the user do in a given amount of time), the
NeXT wins hands down.