From: merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.sun,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.i386,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: SCO SYSV386 3.2r2.0 ODT 1.1 80486-33 outperforms SUN SPARC 4/260
Date: 6 Apr 1992 08:27:10 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: neuro.usc.edu

In article <...> alh@einoed.in-berlin.de (Adrian Le Hanne) writes:
#>merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin) writes:
#>>          SCO '386  502.33   256.52   200.18   189.17   234.89    276.61
#>>          SUN4/260  827.25   436.38   361.89   348.99   422.19    479.34
#>>          SCO '486 1363.98   671.59   564.85   527.15   684.87    762.48
#>>          SUN ELC  1556.66   800.18   722.95   708.21   858.90    929.38
#The ELC has a performance of 21 MIPS / 3 MFLOPS (not that i would say that
#this performance data is of any value in the real world ;-).
#The topic has beaten to death in this group, but once again: The MIPS/MFLOPS
#rating is meaningless for the evaulation of the performance due to the 
#different hardware architecture *around* the CPU/FPU. I'm sure that a 4/260
#is faster than the 486/33 CPU. Try working with X Windows or applications
#that depend on the bus speed and memory management.
Adrian,

I don't know much about your arguement that MIPS/MFLOPS ratings are not
relevant to the SPARC architecture, but I can tell you the real time we
consumed from start to finish on what are relatively intensive floating 
point and memory management operations in BRLCAD ray tracing benchmarks 
was substantially less on the 486-33 than on our in house SUN IV/360.

I only posted this note because of the improved performance vs. abysmal
performance of the 386-33 on my previous posting.  Whether or not 486-33
competes effectively with current line SPARC workstations I have no clue.
But, when you come right down to it, for reasonable size ray tracing of
complex objects with detailed modeling of the physics of light passing
through the environment, the 386-33 is not usable, the SUN IV/360 is just
usable, and the 486-33 is somewhat better.

When it comes to X Windows performance -- display of 3D models including
both raster and vector presentations -- my 386SX desktop running SCO's
X11R4 server works just fine.  It seems as fast or faster than our SUN
IV/360 deskside workstation.  The main difference between these machines
seems to come down to limited amount of memory usually installed in the
PC (8 MB) vs the SUN (64 MB).  Bottom line: if you get a hot enough CPU
[i.e. clock doubler 486-100 soon to be released) and enough interleaved
memory [i.e. 64 MB 60 ns with eight way interleave] I suspect Intel 486
CISC could give mid range SPARC's a run for their money -- and speaking
purely from a budgetary perspective (ignoring operating system costs and
looking only at hardware) perhaps CISC will come out much less costly.

I would personally like to see BRLCAD benchmark statistics for the whole
SUN line of systems.  Indeed, ever since vendors started coming our with
their own internal benchmark numbers -- often not directly comparable w/
other vendors' benchmarks -- I have been quite suspicious about claimed
performance advantages of one machine vs another in one vendor's stock--
and even more suspicious about claims vs. other vendors.  We need to put
together some central listing of systems and performance numbers -- the
BRLCAD benchmark suite is a nice place to start -- it has numbers for
machines ranging from a very slow DEC VAX-780 through an eight processor 
CRAY Y/MP.  Perhaps some other benchmarks whigh test many aspects of the
system performance (including memory management and whatever is special
about the SPARC architecture) should also be published in a central list.

AJ
Xref: sparky alt.sys.sun:2670 comp.sys.sun.misc:1818 comp.unix.sysv386:8384 comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:7351