Xref: utzoo comp.unix.xenix:3474 comp.unix.questions:9494 comp.unix.microport:1682 comp.sys.ibm.pc:19755 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.microport,comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: *nix performance Keywords: fast 386, unix, xenix Message-ID: <12271@steinmetz.ge.com> Date: 29 Sep 88 19:53:00 GMT References: <1428@draak.cs.vu.nl> Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 25 In article <1428@draak.cs.vu.nl> blom@cs.vu.nl (Blom M L) writes: | One of my main interests is whether a fast (25MHz with cache etc) 386 with | some users attached to it can compare itself with a VAX/750 or other minis. Benchmarks (both mine and others) seem to show that a 20MHz 386 is about 3:1 faster than an 11/780. I guess that compares to a 750 somehow... the F.P. performance is more like 5:4 faster, but very few program are as F.P. intensive as they seem. You will probably want to use a "smart" serial card to take the load off the CPU when interrupts come in, and Xenix comes with device drivers for several. When I measured the performance of programs compiled on Xenix386 and IX/386, I found no cases where Xenix was slower. I found a few cases in which the Xenix compiler got into a loop and required hand simplification of an expression (out of hunderds of programs) and about 15 cases where the ix/386 compiler either core dumped of tried to talk the assembler into using "register 25". Both have been upgraded since then, so I don't know if this is still representative. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me