Xref: utzoo comp.arch:7452 comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt:201 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!ncr-sd!ncrlnk!uunet!bywater!acheron!scifi!njs From: njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich) Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt Subject: Re: Why the original RT seemed/was slow (was ...) Message-ID: <447@scifi.UUCP> Date: 2 Dec 88 17:08:03 GMT References: <5046@polya.Stanford.EDU> <1287@auschs.UUCP> <1309@auschs.UUCP> <3736@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Reply-To: njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich) Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt Organization: Nick Simicich, Peekskill, NY Lines: 117 In article <3736@pt.cs.cmu.edu> butcher@g.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Lawrence Butcher) writes: >Mr. Sauer's benchmark people should be aware that the current version of the >Dhrystone benchmark is version 2.0. Version 1.1 numbers are not timely. > >We have a bunch of RT's. We use the Metaware High C compiler version 1.4R, >fall back to pcc when mc generates incorrect code, and run MACH. The >Dhrystone numbers Mr. Sauer quotes are so far from the ones that I measure >here that I wonder if we are measuring different things. If any reader can >get their RT to run the benchmark significantly faster than I can, please >send me mail. We would love to know what to do to get a C compiler that >doubles the speed of our programs. > (.....) > >The 025, running the software available to me, is about as fast as a SUN 3/50 >while running the Dhrystone program. However my experience is that an 025 >machine with 4 megs of RAM, a disk, and MACH, is totally useless. It cannot >run X10, an xterm, and a single outgoing telnet at the same time. Yes, I am >saying that it is not as useful as a terminal. A diskless Sun 3/50 running >SUN OS 3.5, suntools, emacs, and pcc is comfortable. The 125 is about as >fast as a SUN 3/60, again running the software we have here. High end 80386 >and middle-end 68030 systems should be about twice as fast as the 3/60. At IBM T.J. Watson Research, we have a number of RT's running Mach. A simple C program running CPU bound with a working set of around 300k running niced makes it impossible to do any other work on the machine. This does not happen on either the AOS or AIX machines we have. The operating system seems to be the sole difference I can come up with. I believe that the Mach operating system runs well on a number of other machines and suspect that it is simply a matter of tuning. I typically run X 10, GNUemacs, outgoing telnets under Xterm, and so forth. I also have other people logging in to my system through telnet, am the server for some DS style remote mounts, and so forth. Admittedly, I have more memory and an APC. But I first brought up AIX on a 3 meg 025, and it was servicable, just a tad slow. (.....) >I am disappointed that there is no version of GCC for the RT. IBM could >allocate one person to do a port and give away the results, but it seems >that they would rather have a company sell a compiler without source. As far as I knew, someone in Project Athena has had a working code generator for GCC since last year, but that there were (at the time) technical reasons why the code generated was incorrect, even though it generated the correct results. Something about the granularity on the intermediate code pass. I have no idea what the current status is. (.....) >I am disappointed with the IBM 2-button mouse. It takes tremendous force >to push the buttons. We had an informal contest and only one person here >could hold both buttons down while lifting the mouse off the table. (For >people who have not had the pleasure of using the IBM mouse, you hold both >buttons down at once to emulate holding the middle button down on a real >mouse). I believe that there is a great deal of similiarity between the IBM RT mouse and the older Microsoft mice. The mechanisms seem to be similar, as does the button pushing force. I can hold the buttons down while using the mouse and lifting it off of the table surface, and frequently do, since I allocate the cover of a Usenix 4.2 manual as my mouse surface. Then again, I have large hands. People can pick up a Microsoft mouse and judge for themselves. Personally, I think that one button is the right number of buttons on the mouse. But this doesn't fit the X model. >I absolutely cannot believe that the keyboard clicks when you hit the shift >or control key. I wish that the caps lock key and the control key were the >same size so we could switch the key caps. Thank you someone for that >layout. Everyone here rebinds CTRL to the right place. And the ESC key?? Neither can I, as mine doesn't click when I push ctrl or shift. But I run AIX. The clicking is under software control, not hardware control, so I suspect that this is a problem with MACH or the AOS porting base again. I won't comment on key placement. >I am disappointed that the RT expansion bus is an AT bus. The AT form factor >limits the size of peripheral cards, and limits the power they have available. >Ever heard of an SMD controller for the AT?? 16 line serial line card?? I use the Anvil Systems Stallion 16 line card. It has a 186 on it, and all of the cooking and stuff is offloaded to the card. Communication to the card is at the ioctl()/read()/write() level. Requires a special I/O driver, of course, which is available from Anvil for AIX. This is not a product endorsement. At the Unix Expo, I saw a lot of 16 line serial cards that ran on the AT bus, as well as some that fit in the smaller form factor of the MCA bus card. Of course, they required special connectors. We sell a SCSI adapter, but not an SMD adapter, as far as I know, although I understand that you can get conversion cards. >These problems will be worse with smaller MCA cards. We will throw away the >RT boxes when they are obsolete. We will NOT throw away the SUN 3/160 boxes >when the 3/160 is no longer interesting. Throw one my way? I'll be glad to drive over and pick it up. :-) >Many of the things that I dislike about the RT could be fixed in the future. >Today we give APC's to people who cannot afford SUNs. We give old RT's to >people to punish them :-) > > Lawrence Butcher @g.gp.cs.cmu.edu >-- I believe that you are correct in your assessment: the problems are fixable. Some are already fixed, in that I think that the 19 inch Megapel is enough real-estate to edit on, and that other problems you mentioned are being fixed, through our efforts and through the efforts of third parties. I also believe that at least some of these problems you mention are software related, perhaps even Mach specific, and that the RT can't be blamed for them. Since this has gotten away from comp.arch, I've directed followups to comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt. -- Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)