Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!hplabs!pyramid!prls!mips!hansen
From: hansen@mips.UUCP (Craig Hansen)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why is SPARC so slow? [long, mo
Message-ID: <1224@mips.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jan 88 18:07:28 GMT
References: <1162@winchester.UUCP> <28200078@ccvaxa>
Lines: 29

In article <28200078@ccvaxa>, aglew@ccvaxa.UUCP writes:
> John Mashey mentioned "understanding DEC's performance methodology"
> in one of his recent postings. Can anyone explain DEC's performance
> methodology to me, or give me references? I'm still new at this
> sort of thing.

A good reference is "VAXstation 3200 Performance Analysis" from
DEC "Worksystems Marketing", Dated Sept. 9, 1987. I think that
what John meant by their performance methodology is their
emphasis on not stating a single performance number. For example,
they quote MicroVAX-II relative performance for the Sun-4/260
and the VS3200 as:

PRODUCT	       VENDOR     PERFORMANCE vs VSII      BENCHMARK
             MIPS CLAIM   MEAN          RANGE     SAMPLE SIZE

Sun-4/260        10       4.56       1.8-13.3       38
Digital VS3200    -       3.11       2.2-4.3        61

DEC's methodology is not foolproof, but it's harder to lie with their
statistics.  If I were to criticize their methodology, it would be
that they rely too much on small benchmarks, and not enough on "real"
programs, but that's an industry-wide problem, and DEC is not the
worst offender here.
-- 
Craig Hansen
Manager, Architecture Development
MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
...{ames,decwrl,prls}!mips!hansen or hansen@mips.com