Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!vlsi!ward
From: ward@vlsi.waterloo.edu (Paul Ward)
Subject: Re: Can old architectures run fast?
Message-ID: <1991May7.130302.22332@vlsi.waterloo.edu>
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <8324@uceng.UC.EDU> <1991May05.174756.9026@iecc.cambridge.ma.us> <8346@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: Tue, 7 May 1991 13:03:02 GMT
Lines: 33

In article <8346@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu 
           (Daniel Mocsny) writes:

>That is truly impressive, in fact, it's rather astounding. But I see 
>I left cost out of my question. So let me try another wrinkle:
>
>How does a 3090 stack up against modern workstations on the usual
>measures of performance/price, such as SPECmarks/$? My guess would
>be that the large backwards compatibility comes at a price.

A meaningless question - how can you possibly compare price performance of
a workstation (typically a single or a few user machine) with an IBM mainframe
which can support 400+ users concurrently?  If anything, the major difference
between PCs, workstations, minis and mainframes is the IO bandwidth, not
the processor performance.  What good is 500 MIPS and 50 MFLOPS if you are
waiting so long for an I/O operation to complete that the real performance is
~5 MIPS and 0.5 MFLOPS.  (The same applies to the memory subsystem - you have
to keep the processor fed, or it will stall).

>Also, how much slower and/or more expensive is the 3090 as a result
>of maintaining such backwards compatibility? (I realize that might be
>hard to get a handle on.)
>
>
>
>--
>Dan Mocsny				
>Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu

Paul Ward.
-- 
"One can certainly imagine the myriad of uses for a hand-held iguana maker."
								-  Hobbes.