ylh@grpthry.UUCP ( ylh ) (09/04/86)
Symmetric in California recently advertise in various magazines
(Byte, Unix/World) their '375' computer. It is based on
the 32016, has 2 Mb ram, 50Mb winchester, 4 serial ports,
runs 4.2BSD and is loaded with languages (C, Pascal, Fortran,
Prolog, APL). All for just $4,995.
(plus GnuEmacs, TeX, SPICE for $10 each!).
We ran a battery of benchmark programmes and found that it
performs at the level of a microPDP11/73. Seems a little
poor for a 32016-based machine.
Does anyone have any comments? (On the machine, the company, etc).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Y L Huang, grouptheory systems incorporated (613) 594 0227
uucp:
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{allegra,decvax,duke,floyd,ihnp4,linus}!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!grpthry!ylh hsu@eneevax.UUCP (Dave Hsu) (09/05/86)
In article <173@grpthry.UUCP> ylh@grpthry.UUCP ( ylh ) writes: >Symmetric in California recently advertise in various magazines >(Byte, Unix/World) their '375' computer. It is based on >the 32016, has 2 Mb ram, 50Mb winchester, 4 serial ports, >runs 4.2BSD and is loaded with languages (C, Pascal, Fortran, >Prolog, APL). All for just $4,995. >(plus GnuEmacs, TeX, SPICE for $10 each!). > >We ran a battery of benchmark programmes and found that it >performs at the level of a microPDP11/73. Seems a little >poor for a 32016-based machine. >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >Y L Huang, grouptheory systems incorporated (613) 594 0227 When Symmetrics demo'd the 375 for us last winter, we fed it the Dhrystone and found the performance to be about as you noticed; somewhat anemic for a 32016. The pricing, by the way, was closer to 10k list, if I recall. The compile time itself was rather long; about as fast as my (obsolete) Unistar 200. Their rep said at the time that Symmetrics was still using the early NS compiler, which was evidently building excessively modular and threaded code, and killing the machine on every subroutine/loop/what-have-you call. He also noted that (1) Symmetrics was almost ready with a 32032-based product, and that (2) they were trying to ready a less cumbersome compiler. Your observations tend to indicate that the compiler is roughly the same as it was a year ago, and that the 375 has changed market position slightly. The unit, however, has some good points, though. Firstly, although it lacks a built-in terminal, it makes a nice luggable, being about the size and weight of an ordinary benchtop oscilliscope. Secondly, the port of Unix seemed to be rather well done, and nicely 4.2ish. Thirdly, as Symmetrics claims in their literature, it would make a good TeX/troff/mdqs server, although at the time the pricing was not good enough to justify buying a 375 over a Sun, although at $4995 it sounds a lot more appetizing. -dave -- David Hsu (301) 454-1433 || -8798 || -8715 "I know no-thing!" -eneevax Communications & Signal Processing Laboratory / EE Systems Staff Systems Research Center, Bldg 093 / Engineering Computer Facility The University of Maryland -~- College Park, MD 20742 ARPA: hsu@eneevax.umd.edu UUCP: [seismo,allegra,rlgvax]!umcp-cs!eneevax!hsu "Electro-nuclear carburetion seems fine..."
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (09/10/86)
> ...performs at the level of a microPDP11/73. Seems a little > poor for a 32016-based machine. The J11 chip inside the 73 is fast for a pdp11. The 32016 is pretty slow; don't be misled by that "32" in the name. Bear in mind that the 32016 code is probably pretending it's a 32-bit machine, even though all bus operations have to happen 16 bits at a time, while the pdp11 code will probably be doing its best to use 16 bits wherever possible. Also, my impression was that the Symmetric machine specialized in being (a) small and (b) on the market early, not in being as fast as possible. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry