Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!udel!rochester!kodak!ispd-newsserver!ism.isc.com!ico!rcd From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: More Snake bytes. Summary: FP is already emphasized Message-ID: <1991Apr2.200403.27573@ico.isc.com> Date: 2 Apr 91 20:04:03 GMT References: <2004@kuling.UUCP> <8840021@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO Lines: 58 maf@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Mark Forsyth) writes: > >From: mash@mips.com (John Mashey) > >...people MIGHT have computed Price/SPECmark and Price/SPECint,... > And why not Price/SPECfp also ? Don't workstation customers still care > highly about performance on FP applications ? Why did SPEC choose six > FP intensive benchmarks if these are not important ?... You're begging your own question. If 6 out of 10 of the SPEC benchmarks are FP-intensive, SPECmark itself is a significant indicator of FP performance. In fact, the SPEC suite has been criticized for being too heavily weighted toward FP as it is. While that's arguable at best, it does seem that a hot FP processor is going to have a hot SPECmark figure unless the integer performance is terminally lame. I suppose that "SPECfp" is interesting if you really want to focus tightly on FP performance, but the situation is not symmetric between carving int performance out of SPECmark and carving FP performance out: - SPECmark is already weighted toward FP - after you set aside "balanced" (in the SPECmark sense) int-vs-FP usage of workstations, mostly-int use is more common than mostly- FP use. ALL of the $/CPUbenchmark figures are bogus, but that's another flame. >...Is the importance > of a benchmark suite proportional to how competitive MIPs is on it ? Did you mean MIPS? (I.e., was that just a gratuitous slam at Mash?) > Why not also include I/O, graphics, X11, etc. ? Well, if you're interested in X, you're not much interested in performance. Oops! (ducks quickly; large, heavy, dull object [box of X manuals?] slams into the wall behind him...:-) Seriously, what are we talking about--CPU performance or system performance? For CPU performance, there's too much else in the way for I/O performance to be a useful indicator. Graphics and X (interesting distinction!) may or may not be relevant to CPU performance, depending on how much of the work is left to the CPU vs how much other hardware helps or hinders. Of course, it would be *more* useful to look at overall system performance, in which case I/O and graphics performance measures are welcome (in fact, necessary) additions. Just be sure that everybody changes the channel at the same time if we're going to start talking overall performance. > The $/anything comparisons you are so miffed about come from the press > (UNIX Today, I believe), not HP documentation. The ones he was complaining about seemed to have been posted to this newsfroup. Let's separate complaints about HP (which I don't think I've seen much--I think comments have generally been complimentary) from complaints about bogus numbers (which are deserved regardless of source). -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 The Official Colorado State Vegetable is now the "state legislator".