Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!aglew From: aglew@oberon.csg.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: SPARC vs MC68040 Message-ID: Date: 12 Feb 90 23:06:28 GMT References: <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU> <5190@convex.convex.com> <1850@cbnewsi.ATT.COM> <2938@oakhill.UUCP> <3085@rtmvax.UUCP> Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: University of Illinois, Computer Systems Group Lines: 26 In-Reply-To: wbeebe@rtmvax.UUCP's message of 11 Feb 90 19:46:02 GMT >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. I was waiting for some poster to notice this. I felt honour-bound to type in the first SPECmark report, even though I knew that the 88K results for early, untuned, compilers and OS were being compared with more mature products. Since then I have left Motorola and no longer receive the SPEC reports. Would somebody care to type in the latest report (somebody from MIPS, perhaps? :-) Prediction: MIPS and the 88K will keep swapping places (the same way the 80x86 and 68k families do). They are basically very similar chips, with minor differences that are important to specific applications (not true for 80x86 vs. 68K!). I know that there are some blockbusters in the 88K camp coming, but I'm sure that the same goes for MIPS. The real differences in ranking will come from systems level issues: how good a cache you have, how good your memory bus interface is, how good your compilers are. -- Andy Glew, aglew@uiuc.edu