Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!rpi!batcomputer!kahn
From: kahn@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Shahin Kahn)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: VAX 9000 tested at 57.28 VUPs
Message-ID: <9768@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 21 Feb 90 19:21:47 GMT
References: <627@dino.cs.iastate.edu> <1990Feb16.224318.26369@world.std.com> <157@illini.osc.edu>
Reply-To: kahn@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 54

In article <157@illini.osc.edu> djh@osc.edu (David Heisterberg) writes:
<
<Does it really matter whether the 780 was 1 MIPS or not?  As long as
<you compare on the same scale the numbers should be somewhat meaning-
<ful.  A few of DR's CPU2 pseudo MVUPS follow
<
<SUN-4/260		SunOS 4.0			 5.91
<
<DECstation 3100	Ultrix 3.0			12.88
<
<Apollo DN10000		Domain/OS SR 10.0.0.p		16.60
<
<Multiflow Trace 7/300	Trace/Unix V5.0.4		31.45
<
<Convex C210 (1 CPU)	Unix 7.1 fc 5.1			44.68

 WRONG--------^^^^^
        That's for a 4-processor machine.
 
From DR lab's article October 2, 1989:
      Convex C240  1 CPU:    36.42 +/-  8 MVUPS
                   2 CPU:    39.62 +/- 10 MVUPS 
                   3 CPU:    42.24 +/- 13 MVUPS
                   4 CPU:    44.68 +/- 16 MVUPS
     (** I am estimating the "+/-" values based on the published graph,
         but the MVUPS values are those that are printed."
 
The article on VAX-9000 also mentions  
       Multiflow   Trace 28/300          at  46.89 MVUPS  and
       FPS 500-EA  (1 scalar, 1 vector)  at  47.06 MVUPS.

It only mentions these three and the VAX.

<
<VAX 9000-210		unspecified			52.78
<
<These don't seem out of line to me.  But it seems that the 95% confidence
<interval gets fairly large for the faster machines, and especially for
<vector and multi-processor machines.
<
<When real people have real VAX 9000s then we can check out the SPEC
<numbers.  But it looks like DEC's done a respectable job of engineering,
<though at a cost: half the circuitry is diagnostic, and prices start
<around the $1M mark.
<
<David J. Heisterberg			djh@osc.edu
<The Ohio Supercomputer Center		djh@ohstpy.bitnet
<Columbus, Ohio				ohstpy::djh


Well-said.  We need to see the whole report for the VAX-9000.
Starting prices seem too high, since they usually mean a bear-bone
system. , The question is whether the starting configuration yields
the reported performance.!