carrato@mhinfo.UUCP ( tony carrato) (05/24/89)
Has anyone had any experience with a Nemonix upgrade to a VAX 8600? Things I'd like to find out about would be: 1) What performance increase did you really see? 2) Who did the installation? 3) Who is doing maintenance on the upgrade (and on the whole system)? Is the maintenance expensive? 4) Have there been any problems? Please send e-mail back to me - I'll summarize back onto the net. Tony Carrato
seb022@tijc02.UUCP (Scott Bemis ) (05/25/89)
> Has anyone had any experience with a Nemonix upgrade to a VAX 8600? Yes, a fellow colleague upgraded "his VAX 8600" with a Nemonix. Since he is on his honeymoon, I will respond for him now. To get more detailed information from him, please contact him after Wednesday, May 31. He will have returned from his honeymoon and will probably be in a good mood to answer any questions. His name, telephone, e-mail address is: Calvin Hayden phone: (615) 461-2254 e-mail: mcnc!rti!tijc02!root > 1) What performance increase did you really see? About 35 percent increase in Dhrystone benchmarks and actual real work, Calvin Hayden can give you additional details (what version of the Dhyrstone benchmarks, how much faster large compilations ran. As a side note, this VAX 8600 + Nemonix is used almost entirely for software development). This VAX 8600 + Nemonix is using the AT&T UNIX V Release 2 Version 2 operating system. > 2) Who did the installation? Grumman from what I can tell. Please contact Calvin Hayden for more exact details. He was here on the weekend with the installation personnel > 3) Who is doing maintenance on the upgrade (and on the whole system)? Is the maintenance expensive? DEC Field Service will take over maintenance (after the 30 day warranty from Nemonix expires). All the DEC VAX computers at my employer are on DEC Field Service maintenance. How expensive? Calvin would know the exact amount. > 4) Have there been any problems? First, the Nemonix accelerator has been running since Saturday, May 13, 1989. My comments are based upon how it has run for about two weeks. There was a problem with making sure all the boards in the VAX were at a certain rev. level. It took two separate weekends to get this installation completely successfully. They did not have all the boards at the correct rev. level so the installation did not work during the first weekend. Calvin was a bit frustrated at this incident. He had the opportunity to come in a second weekend to complete the installation. From what he said, everything went very smooth during the second weekend. He was slightly amazed (he, like myself, is becoming one of those paranoid system administator types). There has to be a minor operating system change (to adjust for the higher speed clock). If this change is not made, the time on the computer goes too fast or too slow. For examples, the computer "thinks" it is 2:00 P.M. when it is actually 3:00 P.M. after running for several days. This change was not difficult. In my own opinion, this has been so far the smoothest change I have seen. I use to be the system administrator for this VAX 8600 and I had worse problems (like trying to add 16 more megabytes of memory). It took a month (turned out to be a problem with operating system). And I only hope it remains this smooth. I am covering for Calvin while he is on his honeymoon. Scott Bemis Texas Instruments P. O. Drawer 1255, M/S 3517 Johnson City, Tennessee 37605, U.S.A. telephone: (615) 461-2959 e-mail: mcnc!rti!tijc02!seb022