From: keith@msmri.med.ubc.ca
Subject:  SUMMARY: WANTED: Cheap CPU cycles and megaflops
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 17:02:42 GMT



Here are the replies I received to the request for ideas on cheap CPU
cycles.  The i860 looks like an expensive
chip.  The cheapest options seem to be a 50MHz 486 or some of the
cheaper DSP boards. 


Thanks for all the replies.

Keith S Cover
UBC, Physics
keith@msmri.med.ubc.ca




From nicol@ucs.ubc.ca Tue May 26 12:47:32 1992
Subject: Various CPU's MIPS and MFLOPS

Since MIPS and MFLOPS are becoming less and less relevant (and
because I don't have numbers at hand for these anyway ...) here are 
some SPEC numbers. Assuming you want the numbers for floating-point:

SPECfp92 (a set of 14 C and Fortran programs that SPEC has characterized
          as floating-point)

HP 710               47.6
IBM RS/6000 220      22.9
Sparc 1 (approx)     11.4
Sparc 2              22.8
Sparc 10 (model 30)  52.9
SGI Indigo (approx)  25.7
Intel 50MHz 486      14.0

(Note that the 486 has 8 Kb internal cache, 256 Kb external cache,
as well as a 4.5 Mb disk cache; the internal and external caches
particularly are important in getting this kind of performance.
The 486 was running UNIX SVR4.0 Ver. 4.)

This is the best single number that I know for this kind of
thing; ideally of course one would benchmark one's own code.
If you look into the 486, I'd be interested in hearing something
about price for a 50 MHz 486 with caches as above. If you actually
have a piece of code you'd like to benchmark, I have access to
the Sparc 1, 2 and the Indigo.


From bartolac@ugcs.caltech.edu Tue Sep  8 10:20:20 1992
Subject: i860 boards w/ AT bus

Hi:

	I've looked into this recently.  Alacron was the first I ever saw to
do this.  They offer XR/860's at 25 and 40 MHz, and XP/860's at 50 MHz, with
4, 8, 16, ..... MB of DRAM, and no explicit cache.  You can use the board as
a subroutine engine, to run the whole app, or a roll-your-own s/w machine.
I really like the sounds of the Portland Group Fortran compiler (C, too, but
I just do Fortran), since it'll do sophisticated optimizing.  There's also
some image processing subs and vector subs avail from Alacron (author?), 
and I'd HIGHLY recommend getting BLAS in assembly for the 860 - one source
is Kuck & Associates (this s/w avail through Microway - see below).  Alacron
also bundles their better boards with the s/w for a rather good price.  In
New Hampshire, try 603-891-2750.

	Another is Microway.  Their s/w is no good, IMHO, but their h/w is
roughly the same as what Alacron has.  They won't sell (or even promise
compatibility with ) the Portland Group s/w, but they'll promise to refund
their h/w if it doesn't work.  They 3rd-party the Kuck & Assoc. s/w (the
supercomputer guru at Univ. of Ill.), offering his BLAS in assm for $500.
They're in Massachusetts at 508-746-7341.

	Hyperspeed in San Diego also has AT/860 boards, with a similar 
selection of h/w speeds, mem capacity, and they also offer Portland Group
s/w.  They're at 619-554-0017.

	Finally, there's Hauppauge (sp?), in New York.  They make a 486
mother board with an 860 (XR only) on it!.  This has the advantage of 
allowing the two cpus to share the one pool of drams.  They also claimed 
that you must have at least 8 MB on the motherboard to run anything.
Try 516-434-1600.  No info yet on their s/w.  A bit higher-priced, but
you do get a *** free *** 486 in the bargain.

	Alacron told me that Intel tested the Alacron board in the Linpack
benchparks, and for 100 x 100, double precision, they got:

			XR/33		XR/50		XP/50
rolled fortran		4.5 MF		5.4		??
assembl MF		10.2		22

so you see the advantage of assembly BLAS.

	We haven't yet made our purchase, so if you uncover any other interesting
infor on this subject, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

	BTW, do you know where I can get BLAS in assembly for the 486?

							Tom

From bauwens@acs.ucalgary.ca Tue Sep  8 10:27:31 1992
Subject: Re: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

In article <1992Sep8.155451.4592@unixg.ubc.ca> you write:
>
>  I am thinking along the
>lines of a additional processor board for a PC or SUN.  I have seen PC
>mother boards with a Intel i860 coprocessor. 

Microway (used to?) sell boards like that.  But I find it hard
to justify spending US $ 5,000/6,000 for a board like that
(without accounting for all additional expenses until you
get a fully configured machine), when I paid CDN $13,000 for
my HP 9000/710, fully configured, including about $2,000 worth
of docs.  (That price is after academic discount).

(And I would have a hard time believing you would get anywhere
near the same performance, except on paper: 11.8 for the i860 board
vs. 12.2 MFLOPS for the HP.)

In real life, floating point stuff, I find my lowly 710 to be
more than half the speed of a biggish IBM RS/6000-950.

Luc B



From tmb@idiap.ch Tue Sep  8 13:02:35 1992
Subject: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

   Please post replies to sci.image.processing or e-mail me directly.  I will
   post a summaries of replies to sci.image.processing.

Could you _forward_ the E-mail you receive to me, please?

   I am interested in inexpensive hardware for large amounts 
   of images processing.  By inexpensive I mean for only 
   a few thousand dollars or less.  I am thinking along the
   lines of a additional processor board for a PC or SUN.  I have seen PC
   mother boards with a Intel i860 coprocessor. 
   Does anyone have any experience with this
   chip.  I understand the gcc compiler (a free C complier) will generate
   code for the chip.  Again, does anyone have any experience with this product
   or any other inexpensive number crunchers.

I think a single i860 isn't going to be that much better than a
SparcStation 2 or 10 (in particular, since you can put up to four fast
Sparc CPU's into the SS10).

Various options that I have looked into:

 * box-of-DSP's: Dolphin makes something like this. It can sit on the
   Ethernet and has a cross-compiler that runs on your Sparc or PC.
   Problem: cost: I believe this is up to $72k for maybe 20 or 30 DSP's,
   which is too expensive per DSP.

 * put lots of DSP boards into a PC; maybe also use expansion cage.
   I believe you can get DSP boards for a few hundred dollars.

 * i860 co-processor boards for the PC: again, I think these get
   pricey if you want to get enough of them to make it worth your while

 * transputer co-processor boards: apparently a pain to program,
   not cheap, and individually rather slow. You would probably
   also need too many of them to make this interesting.

 * Linda: use your network of SparcStations as a single supercomputer.
   May be OK for some applications, and, I believe, this starts at
   a relatively low cost.

					Thomas.

From @cms.cc.wayne.edu:landman@hal.physics.wayne.edu Wed Sep  9 10:59:31 1992
Subject: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

Keith:

Avoid Macs at all costs.  THeyare not cheap, fast, and have no good 
compilers.  Just a fancy GUI that you are locked into.

Try a 486/50 EISA system.  It will give you about 2.5 megaflop or so.
(with a 256 to 512k cache, and 32 MB of memory).

Joe
#,:::::::;,   ::            Joe Landman  Graduate Student (PhD),
#    ::       ::            Computational Solid State Physics.
#;:  ::       ::            Physics Dept., Wayne State Univ.   
#`::::; oe    ;:::; andman  666 Hancock Avenue, Detroit MI 48202 
#Internet: landman@hal.physics.wayne.edu landman@rhic2.physics.wayne.edu
#          kil@pandora.cs.wayne.edu  jland@ss0.eng.wayne.edu
#ATTnet: (313) 577-2720

From cote@cs.ucsd.edu Wed Sep  9 11:23:18 1992
Subject: Re: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

In sci.image.processing you write:

Keith -

	You might want to check out a Canadian image processing
board manufacturor named Matrox. They are in Quebec. They have
several board at various prices.

ImageLC - low cost version. Can be used with super VGA type
	  monitors.

MVP/AT - This is what we use. It has a frame grabber, which we
	 don't use, and is about $4K. There are 4 512x512 8 bit
  	 buffers for use with full color. A very complete software
	 library (Microsoft C). Also a neighborhood processor is
	 available to speed up convolutions, dilations, erosions,
	 and object extrations. Uses seperate monitor.

Image Series - Big bucks, about $14K for a complete system. Similar
	 in design to the MVP, it is faster, and uses fewer chips
	 for more reliability. UNIX, OS2, DOS supported drivers.

Since we are only using PCs, I am not familiar with other products,
but I do believe they make IP boards for Sun's with VME slots.
If you need their phone number, I can dig it up for you.

				Brad Cote'
				University of California, San Diego
				STARE Project

From bittware@grebyn.com Wed Sep  9 11:26:00 1992
Subject: Re: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

Keith,

I have experience with these types of products, since we design,
manufacture, and sell them!  From your description, I would recommend a
board based on the AT&T DSP32c, 25 MHz 32-bit floating point DSP chip.
A board with 256k of SRAM is only $995, and the C Compiler is $1500.
With the purchase of the board and compiler, you will also get the host
interface code with C source, a source level debugger, and a utility
that let's you run <stdio> code on the board (printf, scanf, fread,
etc.).  We also have a just released board with the ADSP-21020 which is
a real screamer (75 MFLOPS), with options for up to 16 Mbytes DRAM, and
more.  A complete development system with compiler, debugger, hardware,
will be $6985 (this includes some upgraded SRAM and 4 Mbytes DRAM).

I would be glad to send you info on the DSP chips and boards, if you
respond with your postal address.  By the way, our 800# below also works
from Canada.  Our rep up there is bbd Electronics.

Jim, bittware@grebyn.com

BittWare Research Systems, Inc.
Inner Harbor Center, 8th Floor
400 East Pratt Street
Baltimore, MD  21202
Ph: 800-848-0435
Fx: 410-838-3204

From meek@fizzy.csu.murdoch.edu.au Wed Sep  9 11:26:47 1992
Subject: Re: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

	The TI 34020 RISC based processor is a good one for image processing
. Its got RISC internals and special extensions for pixel processing. Its
also A LOT cheaper than the i860. Does 10 native mips (not bad) and you
can get a 34082 coprocessor that does 40 native mflops (pretty good).
	The 34020 sustains about 8 mips, is 32-bit. The chip cost was 
(last year) ~$80 US and ~$250 US for the 34082. 
	A system with this is the Matrox LC image board for the PC.
Thanks,
	Lindsay



From opus@inetg1.arco.com Wed Sep  9 14:46:00 1992
Subject: Re: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

We benchmarked some 860 add-on boards using a reservoir simulator that
requires the solution of large banded matrices.  I wouldn't call the
acceleration cheap.
Overall, the 860 chip using 'vectorized' Fortran ran from 5-8 times faster
than my PS/2 Model 70-486 (25 Mhz, no cache other than internal to 486
chip).  We also tested a snake (PA-RISC box by HP).  On a $/megaflop scale,
the 486 machines did the best.  And that was one year ago.  I'm sure that
much faster speed-ups on an 860 chip are possible with machine code
handcoded for the 860.  Overall, the cost performance (using existing
Fortran code) was disappointing.  We were looking for a minimum 10X
improvement over existing 486 machines.  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven 'Wild Man' Wong                         Phone: (214) 754-6472
ARCO Exploration and Production Technology     FAX:   (214) 754-3281
2300 W. Plano Pkwy                             e-mail: opus@arco.com
Plano, TX  75075          

Rules exist to serve, not enslave - software programmer's axiom
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


From nigel@maths.su.oz.au Thu Sep 10 23:06:09 1992
Subject: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops


I just saw your request for info on cheap add-ins for more Mflops.
We have a similar requirement here for Comp. Fluid Dynamics calcs
on large arrays. Could you please post or mail a summary if you
get useful information?

My only info so far: Physics Dept. here reports they've "tried 
several of these things and none of them work". I can't vouch
for the expertise of the personnel involved tho'...

Only thing we have seen for a Sparc is an SBUS card from 
Riverside Machines Ltd of Cambridge UK (Fax +44 223 321161).
Looks like a single i860 + up to 16Mb memory. Local distrib.
seems pretty much in the dark on this, but says it's around
A$10000 (C$8000?). Claims 80 Mflop peak, but who knows? Maybe
you have to program in i860 assembler :-(

=================================================================
Nigel O'Brian                             obrian_n@maths.su.oz.au
School of Mathematics                     nigel@frog.maths.su.oz
University of Sydney                      Ph: (02)-692-4083
Sydney NSW 2006, Australia                FAX: (02)-692-4534



From imatron!imatron.COM!jonm@uunet.uu.net Fri Sep 11 23:00:23 1992
Subject: Re: WANTED: Cheap cpu cycles and Megaflops

Keith :

I have repeatedly seen the i860 used with Sparcs to up the
number crunching ability.  You may want to check out the
August 1992 SunExpert article on that chip.

Jonathan Meyers
Imatron, Inc.
jmm@imatron.com