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From: pdbain@wateng.UUCP (Peter Bain)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: B1700
Message-ID: <2557@wateng.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 08:53:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: wateng.2557
Posted: Thu Jun 20 08:53:17 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Jun-85 11:39:30 EDT
References: <1452@ecsvax.UUCP> <290009@acf4.UUCP> <5694@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: pdbain@wateng.UUCP (Peter Bain)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 23
Summary: 

In article <5694@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>Actually, my impression was that most everyone had been discouraged by
>the B1700's flaws.  The concept was fine, but performance was not

Myers (see below), quotes a performance comparison of the B1700, a general-
purpose (sort of) machine against the IBM System 3 Model 10,
a contemporary machine designed to run RPG II exclusively.
While the B1700 cost 75% more, as the Sys 3, it ran compute-bound
RPG programs EIGHT TIMES AS FAST. The Sys 3's average instruction time
was 6 microseconds, as opposed to 35 for the B1700, but, as you might expect,
the B1700 had to execute significantly fewer instructions.

The citation is:
G.L. Myers,Advances in Computer Architecture, 2nd Ed.,  1982, 
John Wiley and Sons, P. 214

-- 
   - peter bain
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