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From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 12 - 50 Mip Amiga 2000 CoProcessor?
Message-ID: <23529@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 13:28:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.23529
Posted: Wed Jul 15 13:28:16 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jul-87 06:44:52 EDT
References: <8707150750.AA18086@unisoft.UNISOFT>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 46

In article <8707150750.AA18086@unisoft.UNISOFT> doug@certes.UUCP writes:
[Lots of stuff deleted...]
>The SPARC processor is the engine used in Sun's new Sun 4 workstation. The
>current Sun 4 uses 10 MIP 20,000 gate Fujitsu gate arrays. The reason that the
>Definicon board is 12 MIPS compared with the Sun 4 10 MIPS is that the
>Definicon board includes an interleaved cache. Sun claims the Sun 4 to be
>equal to a VAX 8800 in performance. The 8800 is around 5 times as fast as
>the more common VAX 11/780. And Definicon claims their board is 20% faster
>than *that*. This would be something like 20 times as fast as the Amiga's
>68000 processor.

I am sure this debate will rage fiercely until enough 'unbiased' sources have
Sun-4's in their hands but let me clarify the MIPs issue a little bit. The
Sun-4 runs at 16.67 Mhz, and the SPARC architecture executes one instruction
in something like an average of 1.4 clocks. Straight division gives one 11.99
MIPs. But those are RISC mips, and everyone knows that RISC chips take longer
to do things than CISC chips do. Consequently the application engineers over
here ran all the benchmarks they could get their hands on and compared those
to a Vax 11/780, the result was 10 Vax MIPs. Your mileage may vary, don't
lecture me on how difficult it is to come up with a meaningful number I know
already! That's what they found, and thats what they are calling it.

>All three versions of the processor are to be fully compatible with each other.
>How would you like a 50 MIP board plugged into your Amiga??? Even the currently
>available 12 MIP $4500 board sure beats the $39,900 for a Sun 4. Although of
>course the Sun comes with Unix and a high resolution screen, while the Amiga
>does not.

You realize of course that the I/O bandwidth on the IBM PC bus is about 5
megabytes per second? Even having a 2 MIP machine on it can be a waste if
you can't talk to it at any decent speed. 100 MIP co-processor would be a
waste of money on that bus. Not to mention the big steel box you would 
need to shield it. I still haven't heard what sort of software Definicon
will be offering. That should be interesting indeed. 

>Copyright 1987 Douglas R. Merritt. All rights reserved.

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--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.