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From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: ACE (Was Re: Will NeXT survive?  Grow with the times?)
Message-ID: <&p4H3#09@cs.psu.edu>
Date: 20 May 91 04:11:51 GMT
References: <11399@uwm.edu> <32580026@hpcuhe.cup.hp.com>
	<4638@batman.moravian.EDU>
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In-Reply-To: halkoD@batman.moravian.EDU's message of 18 May 91 01: 19:04 GMT
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In article <4638@batman.moravian.EDU> halkoD@batman.moravian.EDU (David Halko) writes:

   I have seen this statement over and over again "they're 68000 based, so you 
   won't expect any outstanding improvements in the next few years"

   This upsets me since the relative performance of the 68040 over the 68030
   was over a 100% improvement in speed at the same CPU speed, according to
   some of the journals I read about 1 year back. Motorola expects another
   100% speed increase with the release of the next 68K CPU. This may be another
   year away, but I think it is worth the wait.


A 25MHz 68040 is at least 3 times faster than a 25MHz 68030.  At least
that is the performance increase I saw in the NeXT when it was
upgraded.  The 68040 is competive with the SPARC(Sun's SparcStations)
at the same clock speed, and I doubt if GCC is the best optimizing
compiler in the world.  It will be interesting to see what happens
when Motorola gets a 40MHz 68040.  Personally, I think 68000 based
computer companies will move to the 88K.  Moto. will double or triple
its performance at the same clock speed(same as the 040 I think, and
available 2 years ago) long before we see a 68050.

-Mike