Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!leah!itsgw!imagine!pawl22.pawl.rpi.edu!jesup
From: jesup@pawl22.pawl.rpi.edu (Randell E. Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why is SPARC so slow?
Message-ID: <167@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
Date: 18 Dec 87 13:30:55 GMT
References: <6964@apple.UUCP> <8885@sgi.SGI.COM> <1115@winchester.UUCP> <6993@apple.UUCP> <1941@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <36626@sun.uucp> <1162@winchester.UUCP>
Sender: news@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU
Reply-To: beowulf!lunge!jesup@steinmetz.UUCP
Organization: RPI Public Access Workstation Lab - Troy, NY
Lines: 24
Keywords: SPARC, RISC, Sun-4/200, R2000, M/1000

<John Mashey posts a long article about Sun and Mips performance, at the
end include unix benchmarks for grep, diff, yacc, etc.>

John, one thing was left unmentioned: the unix benchmarks you give are
VERY dependant on filing-system implementation and, even more so, on
the disks used and how fragmented they are.  I'm sure I could cause a 
factor of two decrease in performance by fragmenting your disks or making you
use slower ones.  Any benchmarks that rely on file-system access should either
use the same disks, preferably the exact same ones so the fragmentation is
the same (I know, impractical), or at least try to quantify these differences
and state exactly what the hardware is, avg seek times, how fragmented, etc.
Better yet is not to rely on any OS and certainly not file-system dependant
benchmarks.
If you are testing the performance of a specific system configuration (CPU,
memory, disk, OS, etc, etc) fine, do so.  If you are addressing the 
performance of the CPU/FPU/cache (which seems to be what is discussed in this
group), don't use those benchmarks or at least try to factor out the 
peripheral/OS/whatever differences.
Just trying to adhere to your philosophy of real data wherever possible. :-)

     //	Randell Jesup			Lunge Software Development
    //	Dedicated Amiga Programmer	13 Frear Ave, Troy, NY 12180
 \\//	lunge!jesup@beowulf.UUCP	(518) 272-2942
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