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From: pst@ack.Stanford.EDU (Paul Traina)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.internals,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Jargon file v2.1.5 28 NOV 1990 -- part 5 of 6
Message-ID: <pst.660435111@ack.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 5 Dec 90 22:11:51 GMT
References: <1YbxGQ#2fbT353y6xKD8DT83C4bFDpV=eric@snark.thyrsus.com> 	<1990Nov30.172512.5282@sctc.com> <O7Y77DB@xds13.ferranti.com> 	<PST.90Dec1131440@ack.Stanford.EDU> <PCG.90Dec4160737@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk>
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In <PCG.90Dec4160737@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
<No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The IO bandwidth of a typical 386 is
<equivalent or better than that of any UNIBUS based machine, and, in
<practical terms, equivalent to that of MASSBUS based ones. You can get
<observable raw disc data rates of 600-900KB/s and observable filesystem
<bandwidths of 300-500KB/s under SVR3.2 (with suitable controllers and a
<FFS of some sort). This is way better than a PDP-11.

You're absolutely right and I stand corrected.  The UNIBUS itself _is_ a pig
compared to modern bus'es.  However,  you're not scaling your I/O performance
with your CPU.  You're talking about blowing CPU performance out of the water
(386 vs 11/70) but you're still talking about comparable I/O (even if we go
MASSBUS and 780).  Where's the exponential performance increase in I/O?

<There are many reasons for which UNIX has become even more obscenely
<inefficient; mostly it is just plain old lack of hard thinking (read
<"lack of design talent"). I love to repeat my old line: talented
<(japanese) process engineers are easier to find than (american) OS
<designers, so there is abundant supply of high density RAMs and high
<waste OSes.

Gee, I hope the guys at Sun don't read your note. :-)  One of my favorite
lines is "you get what you pay for."  You're welcome to fix the bsd VM
subsystem (actually, it has been fixed).

Paul


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