Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!cyrus
From: cyrus@pprg.unm.edu (Tait Cyrus)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: DECStation vs. SPARCstation, need help!
Message-ID: <24061@pprg.unm.edu>
Date: 10 Jun 89 03:08:40 GMT
References: <486@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de>
Reply-To: cyrus@pprg.unm.edu (Tait Cyrus)
Organization: U. of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Lines: 80

In article <486@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de> gengenba@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de (Michael Gengenbach) writes:
>Hi folks,
>
>I know, that this question could mean war, but we really need some
>decision support. We are the Bavarian AI Research Center (FORWIS)
>and we have to buy our first computer equipment, which is not an
>easy job :-).

Like your first time through a toy store :^)

>We will buy some 40 UNIX-Workstations und about 3 large fileservers.
>Now there are two favorized Workstations:
>
>    - DECStation 3100
>    - SPARCstation 1 or SPARCstation 330
>
>As we do not have much knowledge in RISC-technology, we have a couple
>of questions:
>
>   - which RISC-architecture (MIPS, SPARC) is more common in the U.S.?

That depends on whom you talk to.

>   - what do you think about RISC vs. CISC in performance of
>     AI-applications (Lisp, Prolog, Databases, image-processing),
>     i.e. symbolic computation?

RISC has higher performance, though some of the newer CISCs (like the
new 64/128 bit one from Intel) are going to be some competition.

>   - can one trust in MIPS-ratings (14 for DECStation, 12.5 SPARCstation 1)?

In my opinion, no.  It gives you a good idea of its capabilities, but
if you really want to compare machines, you need to run your code on
the various machines to see which is better for your applications.

>   - how about the software availability, especially AI software?

don't know.

>If you're going to answer, please do not flame! Keep technical!

As far as comparisons between the DS3100 and the Sun 4/60 and Sun 4/330,
it really depends on your application.  I recently ran several benchmarks
on all three and the DS3100 fell, for the most part, between the 4/60 and
the 4/330 (closer to the 330).  The two areas that the Suns are better
were disk accesses and graphics.

The disks on the 330 were three times faster than the ones on the
DS3100 (I don't know how using a 3rd party disk, like the Wren
Runner, would affect this).  We ran some ffts that read the data in
from a file and wrote the results out to a file.  On a Sun 4/330 it
took ~10 seconds (real time) to complete the operation.  On the
DS3100, it took ~26 seconds to do the same thing.  When we modified
the program to write to /dev/null and read in from a pipe, the Sun
4/330 still took ~10 seconds.  The DS3100, though, improved A LOT and
only took around 8 seconds.

Graphics wise, Sun blows the doors off of a DS3100 because the DS3100
does everything in software wereas the Sun can, assuming you purchase
the graphics accelerator, do most everything in hardware.

Suggestion:
If all you are doing is number crunching, buy the DS3100 (or wait for
the rumored DS that will use the newer R3000 MIPS processor that is
"supposed" to be out late summer).

If you are going to be doing lots of graphics, or lots of things with
the disk, I would buy the Sun 4/330 (the 4/60 is nice, but you are
probably better getting the 4/330).

Disclaimer: The above is my opinion only.  Any comments about rumors
are just that, rumors and are not to be taken as containing any
semblance of reallity.
---
W. Tait Cyrus   (505) 277-0806		e-mail: cyrus@pprg.unm.edu
University of New Mexico			
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Parallel Processing Research Group
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131