hoberoi@eagle.wesleyan.edu (06/26/91)
Hi,
here goes:
any comparisons of RS6000 530/540 etc with the HP Apollo 9000 series
700 machines ?
HP claims better SPECmarks for all the comparable models
SPEC IBM 320 HP 720 IBM 530 HP 730
mark 24.6 55.5 32 72.2
int 16.3 39.0 20.4 51.0
fp 32.4 70.2 43.4 91.0
I would be interested in the performance AIX vs HP-UX. How better/worse
is the OS.
graphics- IBM offers the SGI Personal Iris board for the 500 series
machines. HP has the T1/T2 based boards. How do the two compare ?
thanks
Himanshu hoberoi@beaver.wesleyan.edude5@ornl.gov (Dave Sill) (06/27/91)
In article <1991Jun25.214124.29573@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>, dave@visual1.jhuapl.edu (Dave Weintraub) writes: > >Beware of HP's claims. Their machine is *hot*, but they tend >to be into hyperboil (?sp). See Dvorak's column in PC Magazine, >where he reports HP's claims of a 720 vs a Cray, and interprets these >with a wise ton of salt. It's clear from this column# that Dvorak doesn't know his asymptote from a hole-in-the-graph when it comes to benchmarks. He presents *no* first hand data to back up his claims, sheds no light on what the referenced benchmark, AN-SYS something-or-other, measures, and then proceeds to claim it has no basis or relevance. He uses arguments like "this benchmark indicates that the HP is half as fast as a Cray, and *I* know that isn't the case, so this result is bogus." What a crock. He says how he "was told" that the Cray's time on the test was nearly all system overhead, and that if the test were lengthened 100 times, its time might not increase whereas the HP's time would likely be 100 times greater. What garbage. He concludes with a comment from an unnamed CISC weenie that RISC machines are only marginally faster than equivalent CISC machines, as if neither of these guys (Dvorak nor his source) had a stake in CISC. Sheesh. I suggest Dvorak's readers interpret his column with a carload of salt. Or better yet, skip it favor of a column with some meat in it. Can anyone shed any more light on this AN-SYS benchmark and what it measures? # I received a copy of a Dvorak article on this topic electronically. I'm assuming it's substantially the same as the one referenced above. -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) Tug on anything in nature and you will find Martin Marietta Energy Systems it connected to everything else. Workstation Support --John Muir
wdh@hrshcx.csd.harris.com (W. David Higgins) (06/27/91)
In article <1991Jun26.191020.26093@cs.utk.edu> Dave Sill <de5@ornl.gov> writes: > >Can anyone shed any more light on this AN-SYS benchmark and what it >measures? > I'm not a user of ANSYS, but I've been involved in porting the program to several platforms. Take all of this with a small chip of salt... ANSYS is a finite element analysis program, used to model physical structures and the stresses placed upon them. SP-3 is a "moderate sized 3-D solid statis analysis of a pressure vessel containing 1020 eight node solid elements". ANSYS is a product of Swanson Analysis Systems Inc. (SASI), Houston PA. From what I remember ANSYS in general, and solving SP-3 in particular, spends much of its time doing linear algebra (dot product, etc.). I suspect a machine that does well on the Linpack benchmark would do equally well with ANSYS. I don't believe Dvorak's column gave SP-3 times for Intel x86 boxes; let me remedy that by giving some times from SASI's 03/20/91 benchmark report: SP-3: Machine CPU Elapsed Comments -------- ---- ---- ------------------------------ CRAY-2 27 29 One processor used for timings CRAY Y-MP 8/128 17 17 One processor used for timings IBM 6000/540 68 70 ALR 486/33mHz 360 360 HP 486/25mHz 550 550 Gateway 386/33mHz 804 804 No wonder Dvorak conveniently forgot to include x86 times. There is some small truth to Dvorak's claim that SP-3 doesn't give the Cray a chance to strut it's stuff, although it is probably vector length and not system overhead that is involved. SASI's LS4 benchmark problem is considerably larger in size than SP-3. Some times follow: LS4: Machine CPU Elapsed -------- ---- ---- CRAY-2 647 699 IBM 6000/540 4139 4656 Notice that the IBM-6000 took 2.5x the Cray running SP-3, but the ratio grew to 6.4x when solving LS4. LS4 is a _large_ problem; SASI says 600mb of disk is required to complete the run. The benchmark reports I am quoting from did not include HP snake times, so I cannot give the HP times for LS4. Dvorak gave SP-3 CPU times of 49 seconds for the HP 9000/730, and 68 seconds for the HP 9000/720. I hope this information is useful. -- -- W. David Higgins wdhiggins@hrshcx.mkt.csd.harris.com -- Harris Computer Systems, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33309 305-973-5351