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From: gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXTSTation benchmark
Message-ID: <1990Nov16.071217.8676@engin.umich.edu>
Date: 16 Nov 90 07:12:17 GMT
References: <742@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU>
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Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
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In article <742@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes:
>Some folks have pointed out that, to be fair, I should use gcc as
>the compiler rather than cc, since next really uses gcc and this is smarter
>than cc.

There is that.  But to be really fair, you should totally disregard this type
of benchmark anyways.  Using a single type of instruction (floating point
multiply in this case) is NOT a good indicator of overall performance
of a system.  Has anybody got SPECmarks for a NeXT?  I'd be interested in seeing
them.  Also, it is a WELL KNOWN FACT that MIPS should stand for Meaningless
Indicator of Processor Speed.

>IBM RS/6000 (scalar) (Thanks to Charles Purcell---I don't know if this was gcc, though)
>
>  3.3 MFLOPS

As I've said, this is not a good benchmark.  BTW- How did you compile it?
When I use gcc -O I get somewhere around 7.5 megaflops on our 320s.  I'll
try it on a 540 in a bit.  Unlike many other processors, I find that the
POWERstations live up to the performance claims that IBM makes.

>So, for simple scalar floating point, the NeXTStation seems to be the
>price/performance leader (and even the performance leader!)

Could be the price/performance leader.  Dunno.  A NeXTDimension board
would be a better price/performance ratio in my mind.  If you run a
thread or two on the i860, you can get some amazing performance.  I
know that it is bad to quote peak performance (but that is what people
are doing in this article isn't it 8-), but at a peak of 2 floating
point instructions per cycle, nothing even comes close to it.

Question:  Will NeXT  OS 2.0 allow you to create threads that run on the
i860?

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

			Thanks, Ralph


Ralph Seguin			gilgalad@dip.eecs.umich.edu
536 South Forest Apt. #915	gilgalad@caen.engin.umich.edu
Ann Arbor, MI 48104		(313) 662-4805