Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!akgua!sdcsvax!bmcg!cepu!trwrba!trwrb!sdcrdcf!hplabs!sri-unix!LARRY@JPL-VLSI.ARPA From: LARRY@JPL-VLSI.ARPA Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: VAX upgrades Message-ID: <322@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Mon, 7-May-84 01:48:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.322 Posted: Mon May 7 01:48:00 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 7-May-84 05:35:06 EDT Lines: 17 From: Larry Carroll Comparing 68000s and VAXen is risky business. On some computational benchmarks 68000s run .3 to .6 of a VAX, on I/O-intensive jobs 68000s are usually left far behind. And is the 68000 like the Lisa-2 with the CPU having a part of almost every task, or does it farm out its load among special-purpose co-processors? Any upgrade has to take into account just what the upgrade is for. If your system has a lot of matrix math to do a VAX with an array processor may be what you need. If you have a lot of screen-oriented text editors or bit-mapped graphics it's a lot more cost-effective to have a bunch of Lisa-2s hooked to your VAX so it isn't in danger of switching contexts for a single byte or bit. The general principle is to use as much parallel processing as you can. ------