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From: barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: NeXTStation Benchmark
Message-ID: <738@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 15 Nov 90 02:32:02 GMT
Sender: news@MATH.UCLA.EDU
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Organization: UCLA Dept. of Math, UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
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I had a chance to see the NeXTStations running 2.0 today at a presentation
at UCLA. Very nice.

Being a scientist, I couldn't miss the chance for an experiment. 
So, I devised the following little benchmark (gotta be
short enough to type in by hand while the NeXT  rep is not looking :-)
to take with me. Essentially, it does 1,000,000 floating point multiplies,
for a quick estimate of megafloppage. You can try this at home, kids! :-)

#include <stdio.h>
main() {
int i;
float x;
float m;
x=1.0000; 
m=1.00001;
for (i=1;i<1000000;i++) {x *= m;}
printf("x = %f \n",x);
exit(0);
}

On all machines, it was compiled using ``cc -O'', and timed using
the unix ``time'' command (do ``time a.out'').

The results are (drumroll...)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sun 3/50

        34.840u 0.200s 0:35.40 98% 1+1k 4+1io 0pf+0w
   
        => 0.028 MFLOPS   (Yow! Those were the bad old days!)

Sun 3/110

        32.500u 0.060s 0:32.78 99% 0+0k 1+1io 0pf+0w

        => 0.031 MFLOPS

Sun 3/110 with floating point accelerator ( compile with "cc -O -ffpa")

        4.040u 0.080s 0:04.42 93% 1+1k 5+1io 0pf+0w

        => 0.25 MFLOPS

Alliant f/x 8 (scalar mode---faster in parallel, of course)

        3.3u 2.1s 0:05 98% 8+4k 0+1io 0pf+0w

        => 0.3 MFLOPS

NeXT Cube (68030)

        1.8u 0.0s 0:02 91% *** *** *** (I didn't write down the last 4 fields)

        => 0.56 MFLOPS

DecStation 3100:

        0.5u 0.0s 0:00 100% 41+31k 0+0io 0pf+0w 

        => 2.0 MFLOPS

SparcStation 1

        0.430u 0.080s 0:00.65 78% 0+215k 2+0io 2pf+0w

        => 2.3 MFLOPS

NeXTStation

        0.3u 0.0s 0:00 92% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w

        => 3.3 MFLOPS


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, the clear winner is the NeXTStation!

I also tried some windowing and starting apps on the slab, and that was
fine, but hard to judge---the slab there had 20MB RAM, lots of apps open,
a 200MB HD (yes, they have a 200MB HD option now, for $4100 educational price.)

Slabs were said to be shipping in the next couple weeks.


--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)