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.



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  |   Adrian Cockcroft                  ..!uunet!mcvax!ukc!camcon!anc
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