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From: ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (Colin Plumb)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Speed is the one true performance metric
Message-ID: <12142@watnot.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 2-Nov-86 15:18:50 EST
Article-I.D.: watnot.12142
Posted: Sun Nov  2 15:18:50 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Nov-86 01:28:48 EST
References: <340@euroies.UUCP> <1989@videovax.UUCP> <722@mips.UUCP> <377@garth.UUCP> <727@mips.UUCP> <103@unc.unc.UUCP> <1903@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (Colin Plumb)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 25
Summary: was Re: RE: Floating point performance & Mr. Mashey's Mythical Mhz

In article <1903@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>>> Comments? What sorts of metrics are important to the people who read
>>> this newsgroup? What kinds of constraints?  How do you buy machines?
>>> If you buy CPU chips, how do you decide what to pick?
>>
>>The metrics I'm interested in measure speed.  (Basically, I'm hooked
>>on fast machines.)  Other constraints are less interesting because:
>>(1) I will buy the fastest machine I can afford, and (2) in terms of
>>architecture, speed is the bottom line -- all else is just
>>mitigating circumstances.
>
>I must disagree.  Reliability is at least as important as speed.

I must disagree.  The the idea is to get as much effective speed out of the
machine as possible.  A machine that is down 50% of the time delivers 1/2
of its operational speed to the user as throughput. Turnaround time (which is
what most people are interested in) will suffer more, under most circumstances.

Still, I'd prefer exclusive use of a big VAX that's down from midnight to noon
to exclusive use of a smaller one that's almost never down.  My only interest
is how fast the machine gets my work done.

           -Colin Plumb (ccplumb@watnot.UUCP)

Will someone tell me why everybod puts disclaimers down here?