Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!sbcs!nyit!zilla
From: zilla@nyit.UUCP (John Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: benchmarks (beware of sun's)
Message-ID: <411@nyit.UUCP>
Date: 20 Nov 90 09:49:52 GMT
References: <750@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory
Lines: 14


In benchmarking the sun 4 (/280? - one of the first ones) we found
that the times reported by the 'time' command were as little as
1/3 of the real elapsed time when running with a single active
benchmark process and no network (though normal timesharing unix
was up).  
The time command also gave fishy utilization percentages like 150%.
We decided to use the single-user real-time to measure this machine
(since if it can't do it in real time, the numbers dont mean much),
with results that this supposedly 10-Mips machine was between 3.5-5 mips
on some benchmarks designed for our applications.
Based on this experience, i don't trust most sun benchmarks...
h
john lewis @nyit computer graphics