perretg@cernvax.UUCP (perretg) (10/18/88)
Hi, we are considering the purchase of a DN10000 in the coming
months. What is your feeling about this machine from what you know?
I am suprised seeing no mention of these machine in this group.
o Benchmark figures
o Backward software compatibility with the DN3500
o What would be a reasonable configuration ?
o Is there any machine already installed ?
o As any body seen the 3D graphic board running ?
Thank's
D. Perret-Gallixdbfunk@ICAEN.UIOWA.EDU (David B. Funk) (10/22/88)
WRT the Apollo DN10000 (PRISM) machine: >o Benchmark figures Apollo has pulled out all the stops to optimize this machine for scalar floating point performance. The floating point execution unit can do a floating multiply-accumulate operation in 55 ns. Lots of other hardware has gone into keeping this smoking beast fed with things to do. The net result is one fast number cruncher. Some early benchmark figures that I've heard are: Dhrystones 27000 Whetstones SP 18500 K Whetstones DP 17000 K (remember it has a 64 bit wide data bus) Linpack (coded BLAS) SP 9 Megaflops DP 5 Megaflops These results are on a per CPU basis, the machine can hold 4 CPU boards. As we don't yet have our DN10000, I can't verify these numbers. It looks to be 10~12 times faster than a DN4000 but Apollo has a Mandelbrot demo for the DN10000 that runs 30 times faster than on a DN4000 (per CPU), so the speedup would depend upon the application. >o Backward software compatibility with the DN3500 The PRISM processor uses a different machine code so it is not object code compatible with other Apollo machines. You would need to recompile your programs to run on the DN10000. Apollo is working on a combined object module (IE the compiler would produce both types of object code and put them in one file). That would produce a program that would run on either type machine but be twice as large. It IS data compatible though, so data files can be used on any machine without conversion problems. >o What would be a reasonable configuration ? The machine is modular so you could start small and add compute power as you go. It will take upto 4 CPUs, 128 Megabytes of RAM, 4 disk drives. The display controller is not out yet. There is rumor of a FDDI network interface for it. It has a VME and AT I/O bus in it so it can use DN4000 peripherals. At ADUS in D.C. Apollo had a DN10000 with >o Is there any machine already installed ? There are at least 20 out in the field at beta test sites. They are supposed to be shipping soon but we havn't received a ship date yet for ours. I have heard that there are some bugs that need to be worked out of the compilers. >o As any body seen the 3D graphic board running ? I don't know if the 3D graphics head has made it out of R&D yet. It sounds like a winner also. It plugs into the X bus (the high speed CPU to memory bus) and uses one of the CPU modules to do its graphics work. Thus as the CPUs and compilers get better, the graphics get faster. I will be happy to post some real benchmark results when I get my mits on our machine. Dave Funk University of Iowa