Message-ID: <bnews.megatest.186>
Newsgroups: net.micro
Path: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!dre
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!dre
From: megatest!dre
Date: Wed Feb 16 01:04:50 1983
Subject: Benchmarks of machines at Unicom
Posted: Sat Feb 12 19:34:48 1983
Received: Wed Feb 16 01:04:50 1983
At UNICOM Yin Shih and I took the opportunity to run a simple benchmark on
most of the machines on display at the vendor exhibit. This is an attempt
at organizing the results.
In any benchmark it is important to know 1) what the benchmark tests and 2)
whether you care about what the benchmark tests. An example of what I
would consider to be a poor benchmark for most purposes is the Whetstone.
The Whetstone bashes away at transcendental functions, exercising floating
point load, add, and multiply instructions. Unfortunately it uses these
instructions with a frequency seldom encountered even in "heavy floating
point grinders" such as SPICE. So, to make a long story short, we're going
to tell you what we did and what numbers we got, but we're not going to
make any claims about which machine is the "fastest" or "best buy." We
aren't going to try to interpret the results. Just the facts, ma'am.
Also, we did this on our own and not as representatives of Megatest--so
flame at us but don't get mad at the company (the only company ENTIRELY
composed of Dead Heads! Long Live net.gdead!).
Now that we've covered our a**es, let's get to the fun part.
The benchmark (for better or worse) is:
main()
{
long i;
for (i=0;i<1000000;i++);
printf("Done.\n");
}
This is obviously completely cpu bound and tests 32 bit integer arithmetic
(or at least increment and compare).
We ran two tests. These were:
/bin/time cc tst.c
and
/bin/time a.out
The compile was quite i/o bound on most systems. Some machines which did
very well in the loop had terrible disk access times. Others had
reasonable i/o but slow processors.
The system configurations and prices stated below are, in most cases, as
tested. In some cases the prices quoted us by the salesmen were for other
configurations and that is given instead. In a few cases the information
was unavailable. These figures may be wrong, but we tried to be as
accurate as we could be. "Total" is the sum of user and supervisor time for
both tests. Significant digits are what "time" gave us except for "real"
times where I seem to have tacked a ".0" on the end of some numbers. The
numbers were corrected for the Xenix ports on the TRS model 16, Apple LISA,
and Parallel 68000 systems after we had a discussion with some Microsoft
folks. It seems that the TRS model 16 has a 30 Hz clock and "time" gave
numbers that were off by a factor of two for these machines because all
three of them are object file compatible and they just transported
utilities over without recompilation. The Microsoft people were quite
knowledgeable and very helpful. Thanks, guys.
Some systems were running multiuser, so the "real" numbers shouldn't be
used for comparisons.
The numbers, in increasing "total" order:
cc a.out
-------------- --------------
System & OS Price Config real user supv real user supv Total
----------- ----- ------ ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- -----
Amdahl 470/V8 na na 5.49 0.26 0.18 1.29 0.24 0.01 0.69
UTS and VM
SEL 32/87 ~$250K na 10.0 1.0 2.5 1.0 0.8 0.0 4.3
32V
VAX 11/780 na Emulex SC21 28.0 0.6 1.8 13.0 3.9 0.2 6.5
w/o FP accel. disk controller
4.1BSD w/ CDC 9766s
(courtesy of 1-2MB memory
Rick Kiessig at (Rick wasn't sure)
Fortune Systems)
Masscomp $28000 dual 10 MHz 5.0 1.2 2.1 8.0 7.5 0.1 10.9
SIII + 68000s (for
Berkeley VM) with a
extensions 4KB cache
27 MB winch
1 MB floppy
512KB memory
ascii terminal
VAX 11/750 ~$100K SC21 w/4 160MB 10.0 0.9 2.4 9.0 8.0 0.3 11.6
w/o FP accel Fujitsu winch
4.1aBSD 2 MB mem
Emulex DH
(the system I'm
using now)
Perkin-Elmer 3210 ~$50K 64 MB winchester 6.0 1.0 2.8 9.0 8.7 0.2 12.7
V7+Berkeley extensions 512KB memory
+SCCS
Parallel 68000 $14K 10MHz 68000 20.0 2.2 3.4 9.0 7.6 0.0 13.2
Xenix 8 serial ports
Multibus
16MB winch
1 MB floppy
256KB memory
HP-9000 $88000 10MB winch 26.8 2.4 6.8 4.4 4.2 0.1 13.5
HP-UX (SIII) 64MB winch
2 MB memory
512KB floppy
plotter
color graphics
Sun $29,500 Sun Terminal 14.6 1.4 4.5 9.4 7.8 0.6 14.3
4.1cBSD 1 MB memory
84MB winch
DCD tape drive
10 MHz 68000
mouse and
upgrade to 68010
(The salesman said
this would cost $2.5K)
Charles River $19,400 12.5MHz 68000 26.7 6.1 3.4 6.3 5.7 0.2 15.4
UNOS 4KB cache
1MB memory
4 serial ports
10 MB winch
1MB floppy
Versabus
Alcyon APX $29000 512KB memory 17.0 2.7 1.0 14.0 13.1 0.0 16.8
Regulus winchester
(size n/a)
68000
(speed n/a)
streamer tape
drive
Q bus
Codata 3300 $14000 68000 20.0 3.6 4.5 11.0 10.5 0.1 18.7
V7 (speed n/a)
2 serial ports
12 MB winch
1 MB floppy
320K memory
Pacific Micro $13,900 68000 30.0 3.5 4.6 11.0 10.5 0.1 18.7
Super Sun (speed n/a)
Unisoft V7 20 MB winch
1MB floppy
Multibus
256KB memory
Onyx C8002 $17,000 4 MHz Z8000 13.1 2.4 3.9 13.5 13.2 0.1 19.6
V7+Berkeley 20 MB winch
extensions DCD tape drive
256KB memory
VAX 11/730 na 2-RL02 drives 14.0 2.1 4.1 33.0 14.3 1.0 21.5
4.1BSD memory size n/a
Alcyon APS $9950 512KB memory 19.0 10.1 0.3 12.0 11.4 0.0 21.8
Regulus 3 serial ports
10MB removable
winchester
8 MHz 68000+
68451 MMU
1 wait state
Zilog S8000 $17000 Z8001 28.0 2.2 4.7 16.0 14.9 0.1 21.9
Model 11 (speed n/a)
Zeus (V7 + 18MB winchester
Berkeley DCD tape
extensions) ZBI bus
256K memory
Altos 586 $7990 10 MHz 8086 18.0 1.0 4.3 17.0 16.7 0.2 22.2
Xenix 512K memory
minifloppy
10 MB winch
5-8 users
Wicat 68000 $17000 8 MHz 68000 26.0 2.8 5.8 15.0 14.7 0.1 23.4
Unisoft up to 3 users
V7+SIII+Berkeley 1 MB memory
1 MB floppy
15MB winch
Altos 68000 $12990 8 MHz 68000 24.9 5.5 8.8 10.2 9.8 0.1 24.2
Xenix 20 MB winch
512KB floppy
16 serial ports
512K memory
Pixel ~15-18K 8 MHz 68000 35.0 4.9 6.4 21.0 12.6 0.3 24.2
V7+Berkeley 1 wait state
extensions 512K memory
20 MB winch
2-1MB floppies
4 serial ports
Plexus P/25 $16900 Z8000 24.6 3.7 3.4 17.2 17.1 0.1 24.3
SIII+PWB (speed n/a)
512KB memory
32MB winch
DCD tape
Fortune 32:16 ~$10000 5.5 MHz 68000 19.0 3.2 7.9 15.0 14.0 0.1 25.2
V7 (unbundled)+ 5MB winch
extensions 800KB floppy
Onyx C8002A $15490 6 MHz Z8000 16.8 2.8 5.9 16.9 16.6 0.1 25.4
SIII (speed n/a)
256K memory
5 serial ports
20 MB winch
DCD tape drive
TRS Model 16 ~$10000 68000 24.0 3.2 6.0 17.0 16.1 0.3 25.6
Xenix (speed n/a)
up to 3 users
12 MB winch
1 MB floppy
256K memory
Apple Lisa ~$10000 5 MHz 68000 60.0 6.1 7.6 16.0 12.1 0.1 25.9
Xenix 1 MB memory
5 MB winch
1 MB floppy
Apple Lisa ~$10000+ 5 MHz 68000 39.0 5.3 7.2 15.0 14.5 0.1 27.1
Unisoft cost of 1 MB memory
second 2-5 MB winch
drive 1 MB floppy
(n/a)
Dual $16660 8 MHz 68000 21.0 5.9 6.1 18.0 17.2 0.2 29.4
Unisoft (10MHz planned)
(reconfiguration S100 bus
rights cost $2000) 20 MB winch
1 MB floppy
512K memory
4 users
BBN C/60 $53000 8 users 9.0 1.4 1.9 27.0 26.0 0.1 29.4
BBN Unix 68MB disk
512KB memory
The salesman
said this machine
was running with
C/70 microcode.
Momentum Hawk $18000 6 MHz 68000 33.0 4.2 12.6 16.0 12.2 1.6 30.6
model 32/4 (8 MHz planned)
V7+Berkeley 1 MB memory
extensions+f77 20 MB winch
4 terminals
IBM PC+Sritek ~$8000 8 MHz 68000 38.0 8.9 14.8 11.0 10.6 0.2 34.5
68000 card 1 wait state
Xenix Davong 5 MB winch
2 floppies
512KB memory
Intel 86/330X $16000 8 MHz 8086 16.0 3.0 4.8 37.0 28.6 0.2 36.6
Xenix Multibus
2 users
384 KB memory
35 MB winch
Cosmos Lyra $16500 68000 34.0 7.9 8.2 23.0 21.7 0.2 38.0
V7 (SIII planned) (speed n/a)
20 MB winch
1 MB floppy
Multibus
512K memory
8 serial ports
IBM PC ~$6000 5 MHz 8088 26.0 (est.) 26.8 26.0 0.5 39.5
Mark Williams' 512K memory (est.)
Coherent Corvus 10 MB winch
IBM monochrome crt
National NS16000 n/a 6 MHz NS16032 37.0 4.4 15.5 21.1 19.6 0.6 40.1
4.1BSD 1.5MB memory
20 MB winch
DCD tape drive
joystick and
graphics display
PDP 11/23Plus n/a 11/23Plus cpu 26.0 3.3 8.3 30.0 29.2 0.2 41.0
DEC V7M-11 2-RL02s
(~$1K per user size of memory n/a
license fee)
Corvus Unixplex ~$13-14K 8 MHz 68000 40.3 3.5 35.0 14.2 12.5 1.6 52.6
Unisoft OEMs only 512KB memory
2 serial ports
10 MB winch
We would appreciate any additional information or corrections to this list.
Dave Emberson Yin Shih
Megatest Corp. Megatest Corp.
477 Potrero Rd. 477 Potrero Rd.
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Sunnyvale, CA 94086
ucbvax!lbl-csam!megatest!dre ucbvax!lbl-csam!megatest!yin
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