From: mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst)
Subject: Re: DIR
Organization: Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Radioastronomie
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 09:59:16 GMT

In <1992Aug17.022358.28042@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> chuj@horton.Colorado.EDU (CHU JEFFREY) writes:
>Well Michael here's your chance to assure us.  Here is some articles which
>came from people who had the specs and tests.  There are some Magazine pages
>and which mags some of the specs came from.  And remember as well these tests
>were done without the Weitek 4167 which is a Math co-processor for the 486DX
>machines.

Yes, I was not talking about the Weitek. I was talking about raw floating
point performance (and not some mix between different compilers, different
test programs and different memory systems).

>This is BS also. The 486 is slightly *faster* than the 040 on integer
>operations and slower by about 40% on floating point.  This fact

Up to here I see no facts.

>Don't take my word for it. Here are SPECmark numbers from an objective
>source:

SPECmarks evaluate systems, not processors.

>        Vendor      Moto  Moto  Intel Sun   MIPS  Moto  IBM     Intel
>        Achitecture 68040 68040 486   SPARC R3000 88000 RS/6000 i860
>        Cache       none  128K  128K  128K  128K  128K  64K/8K  none
>        Clock (MHz) 25    25    25    25    25    25    25      33  
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>Integer gcc         12.4  13.8  13.8  13.8  15.5  17.5  17.8   11.5
>        espresso    12.8  13.4  12.2  11.6  17.7  19.4  20.7   20.0
>        li          14.9  15.5  16.8  11.2  20.4  20.7  19.8   17.7

						   ^^^^^^^^^^
says: en par

>FP      spice2g6    11.8  13.1  8.8   11.4  12.1  12.5  27.6   14.8
>        doduc       7.7   8.1   5.8   9.5   15.9  10.1  27.7   15.6
>        nasa7       11.5  12.1  5.8   14.0  18.1  15.2  35.5   45.0
>        matrix300   10.8  11.5  9.5   14.7  13.8  18.4  21.8   21.5
>        fpppp       12.1  13.4  7.0   13.1  17.8  14.7  54.7   21.8
>        tomcatv     8.4   9.1   4.3   8.2   13.9  11.6  75.7   34.0

                           ^^^^^^^^^
says: 040 is 25-110% faster in FP. This shows you that FP speed isn't
measured (the ratio should be closer to a constant).

>systems are the HP 425t, HP 425s, an unspecified 486 system, Sun 
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I don't know if the HP 425 uses no compromises.. but an unspecified
486 system may waste as much on resources to get maximum speed.

>In the FAQ's on comp.unix.aux, there is a line saying
>that a Quadra 950 running AUX 3.0 does about 7 SPECmarks.
>For comparison, A DECstation 5000/120 does about
>14 SPECmarks (22 MIPS)

This again evaluates systems (and most likely the performance of the
compiler on that system).

>	cpu			MIPS		MFLOPS
>	040-25 Mhz		15-18		1.6-2.4
>	486-33 Mhz		15-16		1.8-2.6  (w/o Weitek)

This time the 486 (at 33MHz) is considered even faster at FP which should
contradict the above numbers.

>But I do suggest having a glance at the PC mag may 1992 issue and the BYTE
>which had the MFLOPS ratings "486DX33 faster than the 040-25 in MFLOPS".

The PC mag says: PC is faster than Apple.

>============================================================================
>System                 K Dhrystones     K Whetstones    MFLOPS     SPECmarks
>                         (1.1/2.0)      (Sing/Dbl)     (S/D)

>NextStation Turbo        32.3/30.5        5.7/7.5       2.5/2.3      14.1
>  (33MHz 040)

>NextStation              24.8/22.9        4.2/5.5       1.8/1.6      ??
>  (25MHz 040)

>HP 9000/425e             58.1/39.2        10.9/10.8     1.7/1.6      10.3
>  (25MHz 040)

Here we see two 2 040-boxes where one is 30-100% faster on dhrystone
and whetstone but the MFLOPs value (measured with what ?) as well as
the SPECmark value are worse. Fascinating.

>DECstation 5000/125      41.7/36.8        16.6/13.0     6.3/2.6      14.2
>  (25MHz R3000)
>I would suggest that, with the right compilier (such as gcc), the Quadras
>would fall quite nicely in this catagory...

A true word.

Now, a "fact" that I can add: A scientific calulation that is one of our
(our==speckle imaging group) main CPU burners results in:

Calculation of 1 Million (double precision) bispectrum elements:

System                                                         seconds

A3000/25MHz Lattice C 5.04 compiler
lc -O -m2 -f8 -Lm                                                   97
A3000/25MHz Lattice C 5.10b compiler
lc -O -m3 -f8 -Llib:lcm881.lib                                      89
A3000/25MHz Mercury 68040/33MHz accelerator LC 5.04 compiler
lc -O -m2 -f8 -Lm                                                   16
DECstation 5000/200 (R3000 25MHz) GNU C Compiler 1.39
gcc -g -O -traditional -fstrength-reduce -fcombine-regs             15
DECstation 5000/200 (R3000 25MHz) Ultrix 4.2 C Compiler
cc -O4                                                              15
DECstation 5000/125 (R3000 25MHz) GNU C Compiler 1.39
gcc -g -O -traditional -fstrength-reduce -fcombine-regs             18
HP 9000/730 HPUX 8.05 C Compiler
cc +O3																6.4
SGI Indigo (R3000 33MHz) IRIX 4.0 C Compiler
cc -O                                                                11
SparcStation 10 Solaris 2 C Compiler
cc -O2                                                              8.1

Sorry, I couldn't find a 486 box with a compiler that could compile
the program. But according to the test the 040 runs FP faster than
a DECstation 5000/125.

Regards,
-- 
Michael van Elst
UUCP:     universe!local-cluster!milky-way!sol!earth!uunet!unido!mpirbn!p554mve
Internet: p554mve@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."