Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ucla-cs!lanai.cs.ucla.edu!lange From: lange@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: The Fate of the Macintosh Message-ID: <1991Mar23.064856.4877@cs.ucla.edu> Date: 23 Mar 91 06:48:56 GMT References: <1991Mar22.154811.8691@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu> <1991Mar23.055725.27761@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: usenet@cs.ucla.edu (Mr. News Himself) Organization: UCLA Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Lines: 39 Nntp-Posting-Host: lanai.cs.ucla.edu In article <1991Mar23.055725.27761@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> dawg6844@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu () writes: > >(sigh) >I really wish people would stop talking about MIPS as if it means something. > >MIPS is the second most useless measure of computing power there is, just >behind MFLOPS. You're right, of course, but only to a point. On the same kind of machines, running the same software, MIPS *is* a fairly reliable measure of performance between models of that machine. The fact that a Mac Classic is about 0.8 MIPS and a Mac IIfx is about 6 or 7 MIPS tells you something about their relative performance, does it not? And, on straight number-crunching and/or programming tasks, the MIPS ratings of machines, even across vendors and machines, does give a decent ballpark estimate of relative performance. Now for many users, other factors than raw performance are going to be more important, like the GUI, which is the main reason the Mac is so useful despite its lousy price/raw-performance ratio. But this is why MIPS ratings *are* somewhat useful when comparing Macs and NeXTs, since the NeXTs *do* have a graphical interface that is arguably at least as nice as the Mac's, and are comparable in many other ways (even philosophically). With those things the same, raw performance definitely becomes an issue again for some people -- which is where the MIPS come in. So to say that MIPS and MFLOPS ratings are completely irrelevant to comparisons (or don't "mean something") is almost as bad as overblowing their importance... - Trent Lange -- ************************************************************************** * UCLA: 1990 NCAA Football Champions (yes, the other kind). * * Oh yeah, 1990 Women's Volleyball Champions, too. * * And even our cheerleaders are improving (they're all human now). *