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From: faerber@iraul1.ira.uka.de (Hans-Juergen Faerber)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs AmigaDOS (also OS/2 vs. UN*X)
Message-ID: <889@iraun2.ira.uka.de>
Date: 19 May 89 10:12:09 GMT
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Reply-To: faerber@iraul1.UUCP (Hans-Juergen Faerber)
Organization: Karlsruhe University, West-Germany
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###########################################
I am posting this for a friend who has no
possibility to post news.

Please refer to his email address.
###########################################

Hi folks,

I want to say something to the OS/2 discussion
on the net.

1. about benchmarks

   I ran the dhampstone benchmark posted to the net last year
   on different computers in our institute.
   
   The benchmark was written by Jack Purdum in 1985.
   I ran it 100 times, screen output to /dev/nul or NUL:.
   
   Here are the results:
   
       MicroVax II (Ultrix)                806 sec.
       
       PCS Cadmus  (System V)
         68020  20 MHz                     267 sec.
       
       Sun 4       (SUN OS)
         10 MIPS Risc                       56 sec.
       
       IBM-AT 03   (PC-DOS 3.2)
         80286   8 MHz  1 Wait  32 MB HD   537 sec.
       
       IBM PS/2-70 A21  (PC-DOS 4.0)
         80386  25 MHz  cache  115 MB HD   156 sec.
       
       IBM PS/2-70 A21  (MS-OS/2 1.1)      168 sec.
  
   The PC programs were compiled with Microsoft C 5.1 using
   options  -Ms -FPi87 -Oalt.
   
   As you can see the overhead for OS/2 is about 8%.
   (Who got the 40% and why ???????)

   (For all of you who didn't receive the source from the net:
        The dhampstone benchmark uses character, int, long,
        float, and file-I/O.

    If you are interested in the source, please send me a mail,
    I will send you the source back. )
   
2. about UNIX
   
   From the above you can see, we use many different UN*X
   machines.
   
   The problem with UN*X is the response time. It is a multi-user
   operating system, that causes waiting for mouse operations or
   for echoing typed characters on heavy load.
   Sometimes you have to wait for the mouse even if you are the only
   user actually logged in.
   This is because UN*X wants to give every process in the system
   (e.g. printer spooler, network daemon, background compile,...)
   the same part of CPU time as the foreground dialog process.
   OS/2 does it better in using a "very good" (my opinion) priority scheme.
   
   Also screen group switching in OS/2 is far better than layered shell
   in UN*X.
   
3. about multitasking and fork()/exec()

   fork() under UN*X is behind the concepts of threads in OS/2, because
   it needs duplication of assigned memory space.
   fork() is normally used for two purposes:
   
     - setting up a process for doing some tasks in parallel
       This can be done by threads in a more efficient and clearer way.
       
     - running an other program (like the shell)
       In UN*X it needs first duplication using fork() and then
       overlaying the process using exec().
       In OS/2 you can do the same using only spawn() in C
       or DosExecPgm().
       
   I know, I know, you are not able to port UN*X software easy to OS/2.
   But as far as I know, OS/2 was not designed to be a replacement
   for UN*X, it should be the PC operating system for today.

My only experience about OS/2 is an internal revision by Microsoft.
This revision is dated March 88.

IBM is not able to sell OS/2 1.1 with the Presentation Manager in Germany.
They announced for June 89.

Perhaps in two months I have more expirience.

Any comments are welcome.

Birger

/***********************************************************************/
/* Birger Kraegelin                                                    */
/* Fraunhofer Institut fuer           Tel: 0721/6091-454               */
/* Informations- und                                                   */
/* Datenverarbeitung (IITB)         email: krg@iitb.fhg.de             */
/* Fraunhoferstr. 1                                                    */
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