Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!Teknowledge.COM!unix!garth!fouts@bozeman.bozeman.ingr.UUCP (Martin Fouts)
From: fouts@bozeman.bozeman.ingr.UUCP (Martin Fouts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.super
Subject: Re: Cray vs. PC Benchmark
Message-ID: <97@garth.UUCP>
Date: 20 Oct 90 17:55:48 GMT
References: <38230@ut-emx.uucp>
Sender: fouts@garth.UUCP
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 67
In-reply-to: ddt@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu's message of 14 Oct 90 02:57:57 GMT

>>>>> On 14 Oct 90 02:57:57 GMT, ddt@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (David Taylor) said:

>> Clark, when you compare PC's to Cray's, you compare VW Bug's to Ferrari's.
>> Sure, Ferrari's may not get the best mileage, but there are NO substitutes.
>> You can shop for 386 clones.  There are no Cray clones.

There use to be Cray Clones.  One went bankrupt and the other is now
owned by Cray.

By the way, the guy who owns the Lamborgini Contach parked two spots
down from by Honda might disagree with you about Ferrari substitutes.

>> If you're interested in running the Dhrystone benchmark on a Cray X/MP, you're
>> wasting extremely valuable clock cycles.  There ought to be a law against that.
>> Try comparing the Perfect Club benchmarks on a PC to a Cray.  I think you'll
>> find the Cray orders of magnitude faster.  Pay no heed to these canabis-smoking
>> "PC's-the-speed-of-Cray's" marketers.  Pipe dreamers, the lot of 'em.

Silly man. (;-) I can do anything I want with what I own, even if that
means running integer codes on a floating point machine.  A law
against that is a law against property ownereship.

But on a more serious front:  Certain workstations achieve floating
point performance within 10% of a Cray on real applications.  If you
have to split your Cray 10 ways, the workstation is a win.

>Plus the fact that the /4 part of the machine
>type means that the machine has four CPU's, which is meaningless for this
>benchmark.  All of the timings are for one processor.
>>   [... stuff ...]
>And finally, Cray's are designed
>for floating point, not integer arithmetic, so a lot of extra conversions
>from integer format to floating point format (and back) will need to be
>done.

Most user codes only run on one processor, by the way.

>> Amen!  Would you go muddin' (Texas term meaning driving pointlessly for hours
>> in a muddy field) in a Ferrari, or would you use it as a high society status
>> symbol/recreational racing vehicle?

>If you've stayed with me for this long, what it comes down to is this:
>benchmarks, like statistics, say exactly what you want them to.  They are
>not lying.  They're just not telling the whole truth.

>> Understatement of the year.  SPEC is the closest that comes to the
>> "whole truth", and even it is pretty far from the mark (bad pun).

>Dave Sielaff
>Cray Research, Inc.

>> Listen to this man.  He may not be marketing (virtue or vice?), but he is
>> enlightened.. ;)

>> 	=-ddt->

There are many paths to enlightenment.
--
Martin Fouts

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