gengenba@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de (Michael Gengenbach) (06/09/89)
Hi folks,
I know, that this question could mean war, but we really need some
decision support. We are the Bavarian AI Research Center (FORWIS)
and we have to buy our first computer equipment, which is not an
easy job :-).
We will buy some 40 UNIX-Workstations und about 3 large fileservers.
Now there are two favorized Workstations:
- DECStation 3100
- SPARCstation 1 or SPARCstation 330
As we do not have much knowledge in RISC-technology, we have a couple
of questions:
- which RISC-architecture (MIPS, SPARC) is more common in the U.S.?
- what do you think about RISC vs. CISC in performance of
AI-applications (Lisp, Prolog, Databases, image-processing),
i.e. symbolic computation?
- can one trust in MIPS-ratings (14 for DECStation, 12.5 SPARCstation 1)?
- how about the software availability, especially AI software?
If you're going to answer, please do not flame! Keep technical!
Thank you in advance
Michael
--
Michael Gengenbach \/\/\/\/\/ gengenbach@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de
AI Research Center \/\/\/\/ gengenbach%unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de@unido.BITNET
University of Passau /\/\/\/\ gengenbach%unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de@relay.CS.NET
West Germany /\/\/\/\/\ Phone: +49 851/509-533aarons@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) (06/18/89)
gengenba@unipas.fmi.uni-passau.de (Michael Gengenbach) writes: > Hi folks, > > I know, that this question could mean war, but we really need some > decision support. [.......] > - DECStation 3100 > - SPARCstation 1 or SPARCstation 330 [........] > - what do you think about RISC vs. CISC in performance of > AI-applications (Lisp, Prolog, Databases, image-processing), > i.e. symbolic computation? Our (informal) comparisons between Sun3/280 and Sun4/260 running Poplog (see below) show that on balance the latter is between 1.5 and 2 times faster. On simple Poplog Prolog tests the Sun4 is fairly consistently around twice as fast. But integer multiplication (e.g. factorial(1000)) is slightly faster on Sun3/280! (On Sun386i it was faster still, though other things were slower.) I have not yet tried the M68030-based Suns. My impression is that overall, at present, RISC gives you a better price/performance ratio. > - can one trust in MIPS-ratings (14 for DECStation, 12.5 SPARCstation 1)? The ratios we found between Sun3/280 and Sun4/260 showed that MIPS ratings are at best a very rough guide, and depend on your program. [.....] > - how about the software availability, especially AI software? Our Poplog system (providing Prolog, Common Lisp, Pop-11, ML) is currently available on SPARC machines. It is possible that it will be available on DECstation, but not yet certain, and definitely not before the end of this year. > > Michael Aaron Sloman, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England INTERNET: aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs%nsfnet-relay.ac.uk@relay.cs.net JANET aarons@cogs.sussex.ac.uk BITNET: aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs@uk.ac or aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs%ukacrl.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!cogs!aarons or aarons@cogs.uucp
hurf@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Hurf Sheldon) (06/19/89)
Steve Thompson, olin@cheme.tn.cornell.edu, has done some fortran
comparisons of the 3100 and the Suns and his results indicate that in
most instances the 3100 is somewhat more efficient than the Sun Sparc.
Please contact him for details.
hurf
--
Hurf Sheldon Network: hurf@ionvax.tn.cornell.edu
Lab of Plasma Studies Bitnet: hurf@CRNLION
369 Upson Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853 ph:607 255 7267
I sold my Elan, got a job in science; Now, no one takes me seriously.avr@cs.purdue.EDU (Andrew V. Royappa) (06/21/89)
In article <1094@syma.sussex.ac.uk>, aarons@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) writes: > Our (informal) comparisons between Sun3/280 and Sun4/260 running > Poplog (see below) show that on balance the latter is between 1.5 > and 2 times faster. On simple Poplog Prolog tests the Sun4 is fairly > consistently around twice as fast. But integer multiplication (e.g. > factorial(1000)) is slightly faster on Sun3/280! (On Sun386i it was > faster still, though other things were slower.) > I noticed that multiply and divide on my Sun 4/110 were not as fast as I expected them to be. Disassembling the code showed that integer multiplication and division were actually not done in hardware, but as subroutine calls to library routines. Just out of curiosity, why doesn't the Sun 4/110 not have hardware integer multiply and divide ? Is this part of the "RISC" concept ? Thanks, Andrew Royappa Purdue University {ihnp4,pur-ee}!purdue!avr avr@purdue.edu