mohan@uiatma.atmos.uiuc.edu (mohan ramamurthy) (11/08/90)
Given below are the results of a study comparing the performance of various
computers (workstations as well as supercomputers) for six
floating-point-intensive Fortran codes. These programs represent what you
might call a hierarchy of "typical" geophysical fluid dynamics models.
Identical codes were used on all machines, and no effort whatsoever was
made to explicitly optimize the codes on a particular machine - other than
the use of the highest available compiler optimization. Some codes have a
large percentage of scalar computations (e.g., the QG model spends over 95
percent of its time in scalar segments), where as the others, like the PE model
code and the Jacobian Operator program, contain several kernels that lend
themselves very well to vectorizing. Additionally, the latter two codes
also contain numerous linked triad operations (e.g., D = A*B + C), which would
explain the disproportionately high performance of those codes on computers with
vector and super-scalar architectures. Again, it should be reiterated that
this benchmark suite is dominated by floating-point-intensive codes; therefore,
it is NOT intended to reflect on other measures of CPU performance (like I/O,
integer, etc.).
Relative Performance in MicroVAX Units
======================================
Shallow Spectral QG Multi- Jacobian Onelevel Geom. Mean
water model model level operator channel
model PE model model.
==============================================================================
Cray-YMP 936.0 114.5 120.4 1155.4 2196.5 354.1 475.8
Cray-2 784.0 79.7 92.5 790.5 1098.2 275.4 333.7
Cray-XMP 549.3 77.7 89.3 442.4 878.6 165.3 250.1
CYBER 205 126.8 38.9 42.8 272.6 399.4 65.2 107.0
Stardent GS2000 164.8 27.5 9.5* 128.0 366.1 43.5 66.7
Convex C220 109.9 19.8 20.8 105.9 244.1 45.9 61.4
IBM RS6000/320 48.5 30.8 38.0 75.8 81.4 42.7 49.6
Stardent GS1000 103.0 7.0 6.9 67.3 122.0 18.0 30.0
DECstation 5000 43.4 17.3 38.6 41.6 22.1 25.0 29.6
Apollo DN10000 53.2 9.8 41.4 29.5 23.2 33.0 28.0
Silicon Gr 4D/25 32.6 10.1* 29.3 25.7 22.9 15.8 21.1
DECstation 3100 28.4 10.0 25.5 24.7 22.1 16.2 20.9
HP 9000/835 16.7 7.9 16.3 16.6 18.3 9.7 13.6
Sparcstation 1 12.6 4.6 10.3 16.0 11.6 8.7 9.9
MicroVAX II 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
============================================================================
*Could not run at the highest optimization level.
Cray and Convex timings were obtained using just one processor.
================================================================================
Prof. Mohan K. Ramamurthy |Internet:mohan@uiatma.atmos.uiuc.edu
Department of Atmospheric Sciences | DECnet: uiatmb::mohan
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | ZAP (FAX): (217) 244-4393
PONY EXPRESS : 105 S. Gregory Avenue | Telephone: (217) 333-8650
Urbana, IL 61801 | ICBM: 40.08N 88.31W
"Read my MIPS: No new VAXes"
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