Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!claris!apple!bcase
From: bcase@Apple.COM (Brian Case)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: For a good time, read...
Message-ID: <7841@apple.Apple.Com>
Date: 5 Apr 88 18:16:00 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 23

There is a wonderful article in EE Times this week.  Starting on page 49
and continuing on page 54, the article, entitled "CISC beats RISC in test,"
sumarizes the results of a battery of tests performed by Neal Nealson &
Associates.  They compared comparably-configured (say it three times fast)
workstations.  The SUN-3 was a 25 MHz CPU with 16 Meg of memory.  The other
computers were the two models of the IBM RT (slug city), the Intergraph
32C (slightly less sluggish), the MIPS M-500, the SUN-4, and HP's 9000 and
825.  The results seem to show that as the number of running processes
goes up, the advantage of RISC drops.  The crossover point was often 12
processes (the UNIX kernels of the RISC machines must have had a clause
"if (procs >= 12) becomeCISC ();"  :-) :-).  On at least one test, the
SUN-3 ran 18 times faster than the Intergraph! I recommend this article
for some amusing reading!

Of course, I suspect the SUN-3 kernel is highly tuned and the others are
not as much so; also, what disk interface do these machines use?  SCSI,
ESDI, SMD?  And, note that the SUN is running at 25 MHz, while the MIPS
and IBM systems are running 8 and 10 MHz (6 MHz for the old model!).
Also note that the Intergraph is running at 30 MHz!

Whoever uses the highest-speed disk interface will likely win.  So, this
is probably less of a processor comparison than a system comparison.  Read
the article, then make comments.