Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!prls!mips!vanthof From: vanthof@mips.COM (Dave Van't Hof) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Architectural analysis of RPM-40 for general usage Message-ID: <1916@obiwan.mips.COM> Date: 22 Mar 88 18:22:22 GMT References: <1840@winchester.mips.COM> <514@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <1988Mar18.174031.653@utzoo.uucp> <10018@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> Reply-To: vanthof@obiwan.UUCP (Dave Van't Hof) Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 55 Keywords: average program size In article <10018@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes: >In article <1988Mar18.174031.653@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >> [...] Some, perhaps most, of the >>workstation customers care mostly about how well their big, long-running, >>interactive applications perform, and don't care about averages that aren't >>weighted to reflect that. All too often the important case is the worst >>case, not the average one. > [...] > > As nearly as I can determine, workstations are used for graphics, >software development, word processing, reading news, and reading mail. >They are used to provide a windowing platform with NFS, and generally >the programs run are less than 1 min cpu, less than 2MB memory >(exculding the graphics display). Actually, that's what I use the big computers for :-). Seriously, the typical programs I ran on a workstation, generate lots of 20+MB files (some over 100+MB), run for 24+ hours, and would love to have more than 8MB of memory (32 anyone??). Why don't we run these on a mainframe? Cost. As a startup, Mips could not afford to buy mega-$ machine with graphics heads. It was much more cost effective to by several small workstations and work them _hard_. Most of the original CAD verification for the R2000 and R2010 were run on these machines, such as design rule verification, continuity verification, parasitic extraction, logic simulations, etc. On top of that the machines were used for layout and schematic entry. Even our graphics oriented programs are memory hogs, sigh. The real killer part is there are lots of people here who use these machines for large jobs, we're just a bunch of cpu hogs... > > I realize that some places may not offer mainframe power for large >problems, but I doubt that it's common to run really large stuff on a >workstation. I'm sure that if others disagree I'll see it here. As the price drops and the performance increases in the workstations/ super-micro class of machine and as more software gets ported to them :-), you'll see many more _large_ programs gobbling up cycles. What I've heard from my friends on the outside, they are progessively using their workstations for running larger and larger programs. >-- > bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) I realize I may not be a 'typical' workstation user, but this may give an idea of the opposite end of workstation use (abuse? :-)). Dave -- {ames,prls,pyramid,decwrl}!mips!vanthof or vanthof@mips.com (Dave Van't Hof) MIPS Computer Systems, 930 Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086, (408) 991-0242 "Never. No, Always question authority."