Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpcupt1!hprnd!pat
From: pat@hprnd.HP.COM (Pat Thaler)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: TCP Ethernet Throughput (AMD vs. Intel vs. Seeq)
Message-ID: <2480007@hprnd.HP.COM>
Date: 5 Feb 90 18:09:54 GMT
References: <2447@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Organization: HP Roseville Networks Division
Lines: 22

Probably nobody "owns" the Ethernet IC market.  The National 
controller chip is used on a lot of newer cards for PC's (but 
certainly not all PC cards).  Cards for workstations often use the 
Intel and AMD chipsets.  The early SEEQ chips were also used
a lot on PC's, I'm not sure about the 8005.  People's perceptions of
who "owns" the market are probably colored by what machines they
normally work with.  (I expect that most of the IC vendors involved
don't release sales figures on their Ethernet chips.)

In my experience, how well a chip performs often depends on how it
interacts with the backplane it is interfaced to.  In other words,
it is possible that chip A will perform better than chip B in
a PC; but chip B will perform better than chip A in another backplane.
On the chips which support a buffer structure, how efficiently you
manage the buffers can also affect performance.  There may be a
trade off of efficiency in throughput for efficiency in memory usage.

It is not clear to me that a benchmark test of the chips against each
other in a set environment will indicate relative performance in 
another environment.

Pat Thaler