Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!crdgw1!ge-dab!tarpit!rtmvax!wbeebe
From: wbeebe@rtmvax.UUCP (Bill Beebe)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: SPARC vs MC68040
Message-ID: <3085@rtmvax.UUCP>
Date: 11 Feb 90 19:46:02 GMT
References: <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU> <5190@convex.convex.com> <1850@cbnewsi.ATT.COM> <2938@oakhill.UUCP>
Reply-To: wbeebe@rtmvax.UUCP (Bill Beebe)
Organization: RTmVax Public Unix System, Orlando FL
Lines: 27

In article <2938@oakhill.UUCP> davet@oakhill.UUCP (David Trissel) writes:
>
>The fastest Dhrystone 2.1 I have seen reported for SPARC (obtained from the 
>report file delivered with the 4/89 Usenet distribution of the benchmark) is 
>23,148 KDhrys. The MC68040 runs that benchmark at twice the speed.
>
> -- Dave Trissel - Motorola Semiconductor, Austin Texas

Protestations aside, nothing will lend truth to the Moto numbers until some
independant non-Moto numbers come back from *real* working silicon and
systems. To re-quote a very tired old paraphrase, "there are lies, damn
lies, and then there are vendor benchmarks". I am intriqued by Heurikon's
(please forgive the spelling) 25 Mhz 68040 VME card in which they claim
only 14 or so VAX mips. Questions: what is the correspondance between VAX
mips and 040 mips (is it 1:1?); what board level architecture did Heurikon
use on their board?

Something else that's interesting. In the February 7th Microprocessor
Report, page 4, under new SPEC numbers, a Moto system with a 33 Mhz 88K came
up with a 17.8 SPECmark. Congratulations. However, the article goes on to
note that the 88K SPECmark was only 1% over the SPARC's 17.6 SPECmark (as
well as the MIPS). I would be most interested to see SPECmarks for the
Heurikon board (or any other system) running the 040 at 25 Mhz or even 33
Mhz.

The old Chinese curse has indeed come true. We do indeed live in interesting
times.