Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!amdahl!dgcad!dg-rtp!webo!cheshirecat!lewine From: lewine@cheshirecat.webo.dg.com (Donald Lewine) Newsgroups: comp.sys.m88k,dg.sw Subject: Re: Data General Aviion 7000, 8000 Keywords: New Data General 88K machines Message-ID: <1991Mar22.143552.16204@webo.dg.com> Date: 22 Mar 91 14:35:52 GMT References: <1991Mar14.183029.11714@neon.Stanford.EDU> <1991Mar16.151948.14745@dg-rtp.dg.com> <15515@june.cs.washington.edu> Sender: usenet@webo.dg.com (Usenet Administration) Reply-To: uunet!dg!lewine Distribution: comp Organization: Data General Corporation Lines: 47 In article <15515@june.cs.washington.edu>, robertb@cs.washington.edu (Robert Bedichek) writes: |> Would someone from Data General give a serious explanation for the |> claimed 117 MIPS figure for the new workstations? |> OK. The MIPS quoted are Dhrystone MIPS. They mean that you can get 117 more Dhrystones per second from an AViiON 7000 than from a VAX-11/780. I don't like this method of MIPS rating, however, it is the way the press likes to quote MIPS. It has nothing to do with how many native instructions are executed per second. [In fact, the 1.00 MIPS VAX-11/780 executes 500,000 VAX instructions per second.] A more meaningful metric is the SPEC benchmark. The AViiON gets an overall SPECthrughput of 54. It does even better if you leave out the double precision nuclear physics test. All of these performance claims are only important relative to price. A basic quad processor with 16Mb of memory, 660 Mb disk, 500 Mb tape is under $100K. A price per SPEC that is very hard to beat. |> |> And of course, these DG figures are aggregate MIPS, not single CPU |> MIPS, so it is meaningless to compare a 40 MIPS SUN to a ?? MIPS DG |> machine. If the load is single thread, the fastest SUNs, MIPSco |> machines, and the IBM RS/6000 will win. |> |> Someone from DG, please help us understand your company's claims. Sure, but DG does not care much about single thread applications. Almost all of our business is in commercial data processing. That is why we offer up to 48 Gigabytes of fault-tolerant disk storage and 768 Mb of main memory. The single largest application for AViiON is in hospital information systems. Those systems have hundreds of dumb terminals doing database accesses. We are happy to let IBM and SUN walk off with the nuclear reactor design business. We focus on dull stuff like AccuCobol and Oracle. For many of those dull applications, Data General is more than *TEN TIMES* less expensive than a VAX or Mainframe solution. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Donald A. Lewine (508) 870-9008 Voice Data General Corporation (508) 366-0750 FAX 4400 Computer Drive. MS D112A Westboro, MA 01580 U.S.A. uucp: uunet!dg!lewine Internet: lewine@cheshirecat.webo.dg.com