Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!hplabs!cae780!leadsv!esl!ian
From: ian@esl.UUCP (Ian Kaplan)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why is SPARC so slow?
Message-ID: <546@esl.UUCP>
Date: 18 Dec 87 02:20:30 GMT
References: <1078@quacky.UUCP> <8809@sgi.SGI.COM> <6964@apple.UUCP> <344@ma.diab.UUCP> <538@esl.UUCP> <1156@winchester.UUCP>
Reply-To: ian@esl.UUCP (Ian Kaplan)
Organization: ESL, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA.
Lines: 66

In article <1156@winchester.UUCP> mash@winchester.UUCP (John Mashey) writes:
>Ian: since you have a 4/280, perhaps you might offer some benchmarks,
>which would add to our knowledge of a (controversial) topic.
>In particular, it would be wonderful if you've got any large,
>actual integer applications, especially if they can be made public-domain
>so that they can be run anywhere. [floating-point ones are fine, too,
>but there already exist lots of those, whereas there's a sad lack of
>integer ones.]
>Unfortunately, saying that a machine "smokes" doesn't help as much!
>
>To summarize: statements about performance are either completely meaningless,
>or they're actually supposed to tell something about how computers
>behave.  If they're the latter, you should be able to test them.
>-- 

   We had a chance to use a Sun-4 for several months before we actually
   purchased the machine.  We ran the standard benchmarks (e.g., drystone
   and whetstone) and several of our in-house applications.  From this our
   results show us that the Sun-4 is about 8 VAX 11/780 MIPS on some
   benchmarks and as high as 10 VAX MIPS on others.  

   Our VLSI group has been running their design software and they have 
   found that the Sun 4 is almost three times faster than a Sun 3/260, 
   or around 10 MIPS, for one of their design packages, which uses 
   primarily integer arithmetic.  On one of my group's graphics 
   applications which does 3-D rotation (which is fairly floatin point 
   intensive) the Sun-4 is over 4 times the speed of a Sun 3/180 with 
   a floating point accelerator board.  The VLSI group has not run 
   HSPICE on the Sun 4 yet, but if and when they do, I will post the 
   results.  Unfortunately all the code for the applications I have
   mentioned is proprietary and cannot be distributed.

>
>Also, it would help to specify which Motorola implementation it was much
>faster than: a recent Computerworld article fell into the trap of
>saying the Sun-4 was exceeding expectations, because it looked 3-5X faster
>(than the Sun-3), more even than the claimed 2.5X.  If you consider
>2-mips 3/100s and 4-mips 3/200s, you can see what happened.
>

  Well, I guess that I fell into the same "trap" as Computerworld.  My
  remarks regarding the SPARC vs. the 680x0 are relative to the Sun 3
  computer systems.  My understanding is that the Sun 3 family does a
  fairly good job of utilizing the 68020.

  I will state once again, that I have really enjoyed the discussion of
  SPARC vs. MIPS.  This discussion has been an example of comp.arch at its
  best.  There is no question that solid benchmark data is needed to
  evaluate various architectural approaches.  However there are many
  factors that go into making a successful commercial computer system.  One
  of these is system price.  I do not think that Sun is trying to build 
  the fastest computer in its class, but I do think that they are trying 
  to build the computer with the best system price per MIP.

           Ian L. Kaplan
           ESL, Advanced Technology Systems
           M/S 302
           495 Java Dr.
           P.O. Box 3510
           Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3510

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