eriks@yetti.UUCP (Eriks Rugelis) (01/30/86)
we received a brand new IBM RT PC on a one week demo from IBM; i thought
i'd run a quick series of simple benchmarks for rough speed comparisons
the machine is an IBM RT PC running the Interactive Systems port plus
modifications of
AT&T System V.1 that IBM has named AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive)
the machine is configured with:
2 MB and the floating point accelerator board on the system bus
a PC/AT co-processor board with its own 1/2 MB memory on the PC bus
various other peripherals (asynch. terminal mux, disk controller..etc
on the PC bus)
a 70 MB hard disk and an IBM 1.2 MB floppy drive
i believe that this is known as a Model 20 in the RT PC series (maybe a Model
25, i don't have my RT PC glossies handy)
i ran a copy of the dhrystone benchmark, put together by Rick Richarson, and
labeled as Version C/1 dated 12/01/84
as AIX booted it reported its version as 'B47 release 1 version 0' (for all
i know this might just as well be referring to the version of the Virtual
Resource Manager... i don't know... does ANYONE?)
at 50K iterations
the no-register benchmark clocked in at 1736 dhrystones/second
the register benchmark produced 1879 dhrystones/second
at 500K iterations the register benchmark produced 1883 dhrystones/second
compiling with the fcc command that allows use of the floating point accelerator
did not yield any different numbers
i also compiled and ran David Hinnants C language port of the single
precision whetstone benchmark
using the admittedly crude technique of using a time command to gather
numbers, 1 million iterations took about 5 seconds or less to complete
the whetstone benchmark was run with the floating point board enabled
observations and comments:
IBM claims that the RT PC is a '2 MIPS' machine... the dhrystones seem to
bring to the fore the contrast between CISC and RISC mips... a VAX 780
clocks around 1500 dhrystones and a 785 clocks around 2100...
i have heard these to be described as about 1 and 1.5 mips machines respectively
IBM claims about 200K single whetstones/second... my gross measurements appear
to bear this out
trademarks:
this article is full of references to trademarks owned by several corporate
entities; the reader is hereby advised not to take these tm's in vain
more comments:
the RT that i used today spent the previous night in a truck in -12C weather...
it was delivered in the morning and allowed warm-up through-out the day before
being turned on.... if this example is any indication, these machines seem
to stand up well to freeze-drying
a flame:
AIX continues the IBM tradition of:
distributing UNIX like systems BUT,
not associating the name UNIX with said systems AND,
- - -> not including machine-readable documentation with the distribution
of the operating system; not even committing to EVER providing
machine readable documentation of ANY sort
i like on-line manuals; i bet you do too; if you have any contact with IBM,
tell them.. then tell them again
--
Voice: Eriks Rugelis
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