This is floating-point-performance in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 30-Jul-1989 19:43:34 From: Unknown Subject: floating-point performance I have been concerned about the floating-point performance of the NeXT, so now that I've got one to play with, I decided to see how bad it really is. The FORTRAN results below were compiled on a Sun-3 with the -O and -f68881 options. The resulting executables were copied to the NeXT and run through 'atom (1)' to make them executable under Mach. The C results below were compiled on the NeXT with the standard (GNU) compiler. The Sun results used Sun's (ugh) compiler. LINPACK performance in kFLOPS NeXT Sun 3/260 w/68882 w/68881 w/Weitek 32-bit Fortran LINPACK : 227 130 860 64-bit Fortran LINPACK : 203 110 460 32-bit C LINPACK : 240 104 446 64-bit C LINPACK : 210 98 249 I also have a "favorite" benchmark code from one of my applications. A small excerpt of my results shows for 32-bit Fortran (except the Cray): seconds ratio to MicroVAX NeXT 158.4 1.23 Sun 3/280 (fpa) 55.3 3.53 Sun 3/280 (68881) 275.2 0.71 IRIS 3130 (fpa) 151.4 1.29 MicroVAX II 195.4 1.00 DECstation 3100 15.5 12.61 Cray X/MP 1.9 102.84 So for a cheap machine with a 68882 coprocessor, the NeXT does quite well - especially in C. Of course, if you really want to crunch, the DECstation 3100 has MUCH better floating-point performance for only a few thousand more $$$.
Date: Sun 30-Jul-1989 23:10:05 From: Unknown Subject: Re: floating-point performance In article <MCCALPIN.89Jul30144334@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu> mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu (John D. McCalpin) writes: |I have been concerned about the floating-point performance of the ... |The FORTRAN results below were compiled on a Sun-3 with the -O and |-f68881 options. The resulting executables were copied to the NeXT |and run through 'atom (1)' to make them executable under Mach. | |The C results below were compiled on the NeXT with the standard (GNU) |compiler. The Sun results used Sun's (ugh) compiler. So are you comparing compilers with compilers? | |I also have a "favorite" benchmark code from one of my applications. |A small excerpt of my results shows for 32-bit Fortran (except the Cray): | seconds ratio to MicroVAX | NeXT 158.4 1.23 | Sun 3/280 (fpa) 55.3 3.53 | Sun 3/280 (68881) 275.2 0.71 Sun+GnuCC would be more interesting. And how do disk speeds compare? |So for a cheap machine with a 68882 coprocessor, the NeXT does quite |well - especially in C. Of course, if you really want to crunch, the |DECstation 3100 has MUCH better floating-point performance for only a |few thousand more $$$. If you are a university making a major purchase (75 nodes or more, so I hear), you should be able to get a DECStation or a SparcStation with 8Mb, B&W, 100M local disk for under $5K (I know of three universities that have done just this). Which means you can get much better FP performance for significantly less money. Yet another reason why I say a NeXT should cost about $4K. Tom >From: rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini)
Date: Sun 31-Jul-1989 03:46:52 From: Unknown Subject: Re: floating point performance The 68040 NeXT will be in the 12-15 MIPS, 2-4 MFLOP performance range, comparable to a DEC 3100 or SparcStation, whenever it ships. Consider more your software investment, whether NeXTStep and Display PostScript will help you write better software in an easier manner. >From: glc@frame.UUCP (Greg Cockroft)
Date: Sun 31-Jul-1989 14:34:12 From: Unknown Subject: Re: floating-point performance In the first referenced article above, I posted some floating-poing performance results for the NeXT. In the second article referenced above, Tom Blenko (blenko-tom@cs.yale.edu) made some replies. me>|The C results below were compiled on the NeXT with the standard (GNU) me>|compiler. The Sun results used Sun's (ugh) compiler. tom>So are you comparing compilers with compilers? Most of my results are comparing hardware with hardware, since the same f77 compiler was used. I will post the equivalent numbers for the Absoft f77 compiler when they become available. I used the default C compiler's on each machine. If Sun chooses to ship a crummy compiler, that is not my problem. I do expect Gnu C to do better on the Sun, but I do not think that it is installed on any of the machines that I have access to. me>|I also have a "favorite" benchmark code from one of my applications. me>|A small excerpt of my results shows for 32-bit Fortran (except the Cray): me>| seconds ratio to MicroVAX me>| NeXT 158.4 1.23 me>| Sun 3/280 (fpa) 55.3 3.53 me>| Sun 3/280 (68881) 275.2 0.71 tom>Sun+GnuCC would be more interesting. And how do disk speeds compare? (1) Sun+GnuCC would not have told me anything about the f77 performance of the two machines. The overwhelming majority of number-crunching codes are still written in FORTRAN. (2) The disk speeds are not a noticeable factor in the above comparison. Less than 10% of the time is spent doing I/O, and most of that is spent formatting the output. me>|So for a cheap machine with a 68882 coprocessor, the NeXT does quite me>|well - especially in C. Of course, if you really want to crunch, the me>|DECstation 3100 has MUCH better floating-point performance for only a me>|few thousand more $$$. tom>If you are a university making a major purchase (75 nodes or more, tom>so I hear), you should be able to get a DECStation or a SparcStation tom>with 8Mb, B&W, 100M local disk for under $5K (I know of three tom>universities that have done just this). Which means you can get tom>much better FP performance for significantly less money. Yet another tom>reason why I say a NeXT should cost about $4K. The heavily discounted prices that I have seen on DECstation 3100's still place them at over $10K (with 19" monochrome monitor, 8MB RAM and a 330 MB disk). I don't know about the discounted SparcStation prices, but its floating-point performance is not competitive.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.