Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-pcd!hplsla!hpubvwa!hpfcse!hpuecoa!bgphp1!rclark From: rclark@bgphp1.UUCP (Roger N. Clark) Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp Subject: Re: HP825 math 15x SLOWER than 825 Message-ID: <830006@bgphp1.UUCP> Date: 1 Apr 88 05:13:07 GMT References: <830004@bgphp1.UUCP> Organization: U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Geophysics, Denver Lines: 116 WELL, my posting has certainly generated a lot of response!! THERE WAS A PROBLEM WITH THE HP9000/825 TESTED!!! HP 825 math IS NOT 15x slower than a 500! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ HP 825 math is about 1.2x FASTER than a 500 (for the box filter benchmark). ^^^^^^^^^^^^ The 825 math is barely faster than a 500 in a multitasking environment. In my opinion, the 825 does not represent a large enough increase to justify trading in the 500 (which in my case would require about $40,000). I am concerned (and so are my users) that any replacement machine be as solid as the 500 (e.g. as of this writing we have been up 136 days and have never had a crash). Can anyone tell me their experience with the HP9000 series 825 or 300 (or for that matter other machines in this price/speed class)? Are there other machines that are as solid as the 500? The problem on the 825 turned out to be that the floating point chip was not working (shouldn't there have been a check of all parts of the system at boot time and the problem reported?) Would a 500 report such a problem? Would a 300? When the problem first became apparent, Hal Shearer (HP) worked very hard to try and find out why. We tried different configurations. We did the test on an 840 with much better results (I didn't keep them because I did not run my entire set and we were trting to figure out why the 825 was so slow). We also tried the benchmarks on a pre-release version of HP-UX 2.0 on the 825. After several weeks of not finding any reason for the slow results, I decided to post a note to the net. I am sorry that the note may have made the 825 and HP look unjustifiably bad (but it was their machine). Hal is now trying to find out why the 825 didn't report something was not working correctly. The numbers below show much better results. I have also included numbers for an 840 (thanks to: Jarmo Sorvari, Finland) and an 835 (thanks to: Bob Montgomery ) It looks like the 835 is a fast machine! A Multitasking, CPU intensive Benchmark (03/31/88) Real Time ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Number of Tasks System 1 2 3 4 5 7 10 12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- HP9000/835 HP-UX:2.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.4 3.4 4.9 5.9 HP9000/825 HP-UX:1.2 1.9 3.8 5.7 7.6 9.5 13.3 19.1 22.8 HP9000/500 3 CPUs 5.9 6.0 6.3 8.4 10.5 14.7 21.5 27.8 HP9000/840 HP-UX:1.2 2.1 3.9 5.8 7.8 10.9 16.2 26.0 32.3 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CPU Time (user + sys) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Number of Tasks System 1 2 3 4 5 7 10 12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- HP9000/835 HP-UX:2.0 0.4 1.0 1.4 1.9 2.4 3.4 4.9 5.9 HP9000/825 HP-UX:1.2 1.9 3.8 5.6 7.5 9.4 13.2 18.9 22.7 HP9000/500 3 CPUs 5.8 11.8 18.4 24.4 30.7 43.0 62.2 81.4 HP9000/840 HP-UX:1.2 2.0 3.9 5.9 8.0 9.8 13.6 19.6 24.6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES: HP9000 series 835 (HP Precision Architecture, RISC machine) HP-UX 2.0. HP Fort Collins machine, conducted by Bob Montgomery: hpuecoa!hpfcse!hpfcmr!bobm Mar 31, 1988 (the twelve task values were extrapolated from 10 tasks) HP9000 series 825 (HP Precision Architecture, RISC machine) 16 MBytes of main memory, single 404MByte disk drive. HP Demo, 3/31/88. HP-UX 1.2. HP9000/500: 6.5 MBytes main memory, 3 floating point CPUs, 65MByte system, 55MByte /tmp disk, 132MByte user disk, 571MByte data disk (Used by virtual memory), HP-UX 5.21. HP9000 series 840 (HP Precision Architecture, RISC machine, TTL technology). 8 Mb of main memory, single 570 Mb disk drive. HP-UX 1.2. Tests run with a very small load, five users logged in (using a Bridge terminal server, and ARPA/Berkeley running in the 840). HP gives the machine the nominal performance index 4.5 MIPS, as opposed to the 7 MIPS for the 825. FROM: Jarmo Sorvari Control Engineering Laboratory !mcvax!tut.fi!jarmo Tampere University of Technology BOX 527, 33101 Tampere, Finland CONCLUSIONS: The 500 is still a good machine. BRING BACK THE 500!!!! Or: give the 500 owners a deal they can't refuse on 835's! Thanks to Hal and Bob at HP. Everyone has been very courteous. HP has some very good products. It is unfortunate that I ran into what is most likely a very unusual problem that resulted in a lot of confusion. Roger N. Clark U.S. Geological Survey, MS 964 Box 25046 Federal Center Denver, CO 80225-0046 {known-world}!hplabs!hpfcla!hpfcse!hpuecoa!bgphp1!rclark (Any opinions expressed here are mine and not necessarily those of the USGS)