Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!ncar!ames!lamaster
From: lamaster@ames.arpa (Hugh LaMaster)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What's a Vax 11/780 MIP really?
Message-ID: <6304@ames.arpa>
Date: 22 Mar 88 15:30:40 GMT
References: <310@uwslh.UUCP>
Reply-To: lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (Hugh LaMaster)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Lines: 20

In article <310@uwslh.UUCP> jiml@uwslh.UUCP (James E. Leinweber) writes:

>get you a MIPS figure.  Benchmarks, anyone? :-)

In fact, most of the so-called "MIPS" figures are based on benchmarks
anyway - usually the vendor's idea of the "typical" workload - which
is begging the question since users often pick machines based on the
ability to handle particular workloads.  [VAX 11/780's were good for
some things- but not very good at floating point.  So, since people
didn't use them for floating point, floating point isn't "typical"
and isn't weighted as heavily in DEC's internal benchmark suite...]

Therefore, since all such performance figures depend on benchmarks,
you may as well be explicit about it.  I think the Linpack benchmark
is an excellent STARTING POINT for measuring floating point performance.
But, a lot of people are more interested in Unix kernel performance,
and it is still a little unclear as to how to go about doing that.
Certainly, some simple benchmarks can tell you something- how fast can
you fork and exec - but how about file system performance, network
performance, etc. ?