Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!ut-sally!husc6!think!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis 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. [Portions of this message were extracted from a copyrighted work and were used without permission. This particular work is not copyrighted and may be freely copied, assuming you remove the lines with the '>' in front of them.] --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.