Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!lll-tis!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stc!idec!camcon!anc From: anc@camcon.co.uk (Adrian Cockcroft) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Sun 4 MIPS rating Summary: SUN benchmark document Message-ID: <1849@titan.camcon.co.uk> Date: 8 Aug 88 09:11:04 GMT References: <941@srs.UUCP> Organization: Cambridge Consultants Ltd., Cambridge, UK Lines: 64 In article <941@srs.UUCP>, matt@srs.UUCP (Matt Goheen) writes: > I have always been led to believe that Sun's rating of the Sun 4/200 > series as 10 MIPS to be "Vax" MIPS (this goes for the 7 MIPS 4/110 > as well). Well, it appears this this isn't the case. ... > for the Sun 4/200 (we CAN say 8.0 MC68020 MIPS). This contradicts > other articles I have seen published by Sun where the instruction > count to complete a given task is included in the MIPS calculation > (I believe one of these articles was in Sun's "A RISC Tutorial"). I am in posession of an internal SUN document called Sun 4/200 benchmarks by Mike Schafir and Anh Nguyen. It predates the SUN4 announcement so it is marked for internal use only but over a year later there can't be much harm in spilling some beans. Note that the SUN 4/260 is a 16 MHz processor, the SUN 4/110 is a 14 MHz processor with slower memory. SUN claim 10 MIPS for the 4/260 and 7 MIPS for the 4/110. I use a 3/260+fpa (4 MIPS) and have access to a 4/110 which certainly seems a lot faster for everything. The document gives CPU-intensive benchmarks Dhrystone, Stanford Composite CPU, and CPU intensive utilitues. Floating point benchmarks Linpack, Spice, and Stanford composite. Also I/O subsystem performance. This is a quote: "Since the Sun 4-200 is a RISC based processor, we must be careful to make a valid comparison of MIPS. This is accomplished by making all comparisons relative to the speed of a VAX 11/780. The VAX 11/780 is generally considered to be a 1 MIPS processor. Thus, when we refer to 10 MIPS performance, we are referring to a performance that is 10 times faster than the processing speed of the VAX 11/780. It is our policy never to quote RISC MIPS". Results show 9 to 16 integer VAX MIPS. Dhrystone Stanford Int tbl nroff sort SUN 4/260 19000 13 356 9 0.1 1.7 0.6 SUN 3/260 7142 5 653 5 0.4 3.0 0.9 VAX 8600 6423 4.5 860 3.7 VAX 11/780 1428 1 3182 1 1.6 9.8 7.4 Results show 6 to 9 floating point VAX MIPS. The stanford is a 256 point floating point FFT. Linpack(sp) Linpack(dp) Spice Stanford SUN 4/260 1.6 MFLOPS 1.1 MFLOPS 19 secs 461 msecs SUN 3/260+fpa 0.86 0.46 31 584 VAX 8600 0.84 0.48 28 1420 VAX 11/780 0.25 0.14 154 3870 I reckon this shows pretty good justification for the 3/260 at 4 VAX MIPS and the 4/260 at 10 VAX MIPS on real applications. The SUN 4 is relatively better at integer than the VAX but worse at floating point. It uses the same weitek chipset as the 3/260+fpa. According to Bill Joy the current SUN 4 floating point is half what it should be since it is using old technology. The next SUN 4 should be twice the integer MIPS and four times the MFLOPS. -- | Adrian Cockcroft ..!uunet!mcvax!ukc!camcon!anc -[T]- Cambridge Consultants Ltd, anc@uk.co.camcon or anc@camcon.uucp | Science Park, Cambridge CB4 4DW, England, UK (0223) 358855 (You are in a maze of twisty little C004's, all alike...)