archunix@stl-08sima.army.mil (Bernie J. Potter) (03/23/90)
Hello: I would like to thank everyone who responded to my request for information re: large SysV Unix platforms and Sys V.4 for Sperry 5000/80's. In summary: Large Unix Platforms: Encore's Multimax 300's (4-40 mips) and 500's (17-170 mips). Amdahl's 5890,5980, or 5990 machines, using UTS (5-100 mips). Silicon Graphics. HP 9000-850 or 870 (22 and 37 mips respectively). SysV.4 for Sperry 5000/80's: Unisys will offer a port, just not under the DA MINIS contract. Possibly Arete, now called ARIX, the original manufacturers of the hardware. Thanks again! A.K. Turczynski
littauer@uts.amdahl.com (Tom Littauer) (03/23/90)
In article <22847@adm.BRL.MIL> archunix@stl-08sima.army.mil (Bernie J. Potter) writes: >Encore's Multimax 300's (4-40 mips) and 500's (17-170 mips). > >Amdahl's 5890,5980, or 5990 machines, using UTS (5-100 mips). A word of caution here... as I'm sure you know, MIPS stands for Meaningles Indicator of Processor Speed. You can be burned badly by listening to mips numbers when you cross architecture boundaries since there is rarely any correspondence. In the 370 (mainframe) world, there are independent companies keeping the vendors honest. This doesn't exist in the UNIX world, so you get all kinds of bizaare claims. The SPEC folks are a step in the right direction (multiple benchmarks with varying workloads) but your mileage will definitely vary. -- UUCP: littauer@amdahl.amdahl.com or: {sun,decwrl,hplabs,pyramid,ames,uunet}!amdahl!littauer DDD: (408) 737-5056 USPS: Amdahl Corp. M/S 278, 1250 E. Arques Av, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 I'll tell you when I'm giving you the party line. The rest of the time it's my very own ravings (accept no substitutes).
gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) (03/23/90)
In article <0a=302Ns95IT01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> littauer@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Tom Littauer) writes: >In article <22847@adm.BRL.MIL> archunix@stl-08sima.army.mil (Bernie J. Potter) writes: >>Encore's Multimax 300's (4-40 mips) and 500's (17-170 mips). >>Amdahl's 5890,5980, or 5990 machines, using UTS (5-100 mips). >A word of caution here... as I'm sure you know, MIPS stands for >Meaningles Indicator of Processor Speed. That's for sure -- which is better, -153 mips or -95 mips? The real reason for this note is to remark that most benchmarks I've seen are also rather meaningless. (Indeed, I suspect some compiler vendors of tuning their compilers so that the "standard" benchmarks used by the toy-computer magazines work well but any reasonable application works horribly if at all.) A really good benchmark should simulate the anticipated application loading of the system. DA MINIS didn't do too badly in this area, actually. BRL typically uses benchmarks based on ray-tracing code, since that's one of our big application areas.