stevem@pserv.UUCP (Steve Mestad) (08/08/89)
I have several questions about Dec's new 5400 systems.... (Many of these have been given to the local office in the past with less than helpful responses) Our sales reps state that the 5400 qbus can run 8 meg and disk io will be about 2.5 times better than on our Microvax II's....Has anyone experienced this? How fast do the dssi drives run....or is the kda a better way to go? The 5400 uses the same box as the Microvax 3000 line.....These cabinets dont use cabinet kits....How are the connections brought out? On the edge of the card like the Sun 3? Just run out a hole? Special fan out lines? How about board interchange between the Microvax II, 3000's, 5400? Did the card size change from the II to the 3000? Does the 8 meg bus in the 5400 eliminate the use of existing cards due to its faster speed? Or do the third party 3000 series card run fine in the 5400?? How about the Risc Ultrix? Full of porting bugs or identical to the Vax Ultrix? Third party applications getting ported or are they too busy or not interested..... I know its a large number of questions/details...but the 5400 looks like a nice setup.....and this info will be helpful in machine selection... Will post summary of responses if there's interest..... For those into proper number use, substitute as follows: Sun3-->Sun 3/260......Microvax 3000 line-->3400, 3500, 3600... Thanks.... Steve Mestad (email stevem%pserv@src.honeywell.com)
kennish@janus.uucp (Ken A. Nishimura) (08/08/89)
We have a 5400 in the cabinet (not floor pedestal) type case. I have run some i/o benchmarks against the DecStation 3100. Preliminary results indicate that the RA90 with the DecSystem 5400 is 4.87 times as fast as a DecStation 3100. Now, the DecStation 3100 is about 4 times as fast as a uVAX II/GPX with RD54 drives, or about 0.8 times as fast as a VAX8800 with RA81 drives. Therefore, the 5400 with RA90's can be considered to be quite fast. As far as porting software for the 5400 - it is 100% binary compatible (DEC claim, yet to be disproven here) with the 3100 except for the OS (device drivers). Hence, any DS3100 application should run on the 5400. As far as the OS, well, it's quite similar to the OS for Vaxen, but there are some differences. As we are field testing Ultrix for both Vax and Risc both seem about the same number of problems, although the bugs are not identical. Overall, I must say that Ultrix 3.1 is pretty good. (please no flames!) As far as CPU performance of the 5400 vs. the 3100, it is about 15% faster,o the 5400 is about 17 times a uVaxII. FP performance is about 18% faster. My opinion -- for CPU, the best bang for your buck is the 2100 (list prices), 3100 (university prices). If I/O performance is y (i.e. Ingres/Databases) then the 5400 is worth considering since its so much faster than the 3100 for I/O. -ken I usually don't post a disclaimer, but since this message contains numerical data and opinions....... "All data and statements made above are unofficial and strictly the opinion of the author. No connection with the University of California is expressed or implied."
steve@fnord.umiacs.umd.edu (Steve D. Miller) (08/08/89)
If you've got benchmarks for either the RA90 or the RF71 on a 5400, and could post (or send to me directly) your results and some description of what you did to get them, I'd be extremely grateful. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to get enough of a speedup to make it worth my while (and I'm completely ignorant of RA90 and RF71 speeds). Thanks. -Steve Spoken: Steve Miller Domain: steve@mimsy.umd.edu UUCP: uunet!mimsy!steve Phone: +1-301-454-1808 USPS: UMIACS, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
randy@rls.UUCP (Randall L. Smith) (08/09/89)
In article <106@pserv.UUCP>, stevem@pserv.UUCP (Steve Mestad) writes: > Our sales reps state that the 5400 qbus can run 8 meg and disk io will > be about 2.5 times better than on our Microvax II's. Has anyone > experienced this? How fast do the dssi drives run....or is the kda a > better way to go? Dssi is far better because the i/o's do not go to the q-bus. The controller is "built-in" to the processor card. Naturally, the disk connects directly to the controller. Since the QIO's and data don't travel over the bus, its much faster. > How are the connections brought out? > > Does the 8 meg bus in the 5400 eliminate the use of existing cards due to > its faster speed? > > Or do the third party 3000 series card run fine in the 5400?? The Q-bus is still in place and available for kda50's and other dog type controllers. The connections are either Q-bus or the dssi slots. dssi is bus-less, that is, it is *not* a bus. It is a controller on the processor card. Once all the dssi slots are used, thats it. No further expansion is possible. I think there are typically four dssi slots. I am not familiar with the 5xxx series. A limitation of dssi is that only dssi drives can be used with it. The Q-bus can utilize SMD, ESDI, tapes, etc. > How about the Risc Ultrix? Full of porting bugs or identical to the > Vax Ultrix? Third party applications getting ported or are they too busy > or not interested..... Don't know but a good question. If anyone knows, I'd like to hear too. Cheers! - randy Usenet: randy@rls.uucp Bangpath: ...<backbone>!osu-cis!rls!randy Internet: rls!randy@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu