Very Computer

by **Henrik Schmiedic** » Fri, 26 Mar 1999 04:00:00

Hello,
I can look up the difference in FP Spec95 between Alpha and Pentium
III (40%), but I am interested in the difference in speed of floating
point operations between an 500Mhz Alpha and a 500Mhz PIII on a Linux
box using the free g77 or gcc compilers.

Can anyone give me some figures?

Where can I find info on the fastest Alpha chips
available (600Mhz?) and can anyone recommend a good
vendor?

Thanks,

- Henrik
--
Henrik Schmiediche, Dept. of Statistics, Texas A&M, College Station, TX 77843

by **Carlos Vida** » Sat, 27 Mar 1999 04:00:00

> Where can I find info on the fastest Alpha chips
> available (600Mhz?) and can anyone recommend a good
> vendor?

The problem is not the chip but the F77/F90 support.

As far as I know, there is no stable F77/F90 compiler

for Linux/Alpha, so if you want to exploit the full

performance you have to go to Ultrix. In my experience

you obtain the same performance or even better if you

run a dual Pentium with Linux and ABSoft F77/F90, and

of course a lower price tag.

I have no standard benchmark for this. What we did is to

run a nuclear reactor simulator with a standard case and

count the cases per hour. A single PII 400MHz was roughly

50% as fast as a AlphaServer 500, and a dual PII 400 with

SCSI and 130MB RAM was faster (about 10%).

--
Carlos Vidal

by **Eric Christ** » Sat, 27 Mar 1999 04:00:00

As far as I know, g77 is stable on Alpha if somewhat slow.
Ultrix has never run on Alpha.

-Eric Christy

> > Where can I find info on the fastest Alpha chips
> > available (600Mhz?) and can anyone recommend a good
> > vendor?

> The problem is not the chip but the F77/F90 support.

> As far as I know, there is no stable F77/F90 compiler

> for Linux/Alpha, so if you want to exploit the full

> performance you have to go to Ultrix. In my experience

> you obtain the same performance or even better if you

> run a dual Pentium with Linux and ABSoft F77/F90, and

> of course a lower price tag.

> I have no standard benchmark for this. What we did is to

> run a nuclear reactor simulator with a standard case and

> count the cases per hour. A single PII 400MHz was roughly

> 50% as fast as a AlphaServer 500, and a dual PII 400 with

> SCSI and 130MB RAM was faster (about 10%).

> --
> Carlos Vidal

by **Zane H. Heal** » Sun, 28 Mar 1999 04:00:00

> As far as I know, g77 is stable on Alpha if somewhat slow.
> Ultrix has never run on Alpha.

Ultrix, OSF/1, DEC Unix, Tru64 what's the difference? I thought they were
all different names for basically the same flavor of UNIX. Of course I
realize there have been versions of Ultrix for the PDP-11, VAX, MIPS, and I
could have sworn there was a Ultrix version also.

Zane

--
One of these day's I've got to quit being lazy and come up with a signature.
<<Yawn>>

by **Carlos Vida** » Sun, 28 Mar 1999 04:00:00

> As far as I know, g77 is stable on Alpha if somewhat slow.
> Ultrix has never run on Alpha.

I'm sorry, I meant OSF1/Digital Unix

--
Carlos Vidal

by **Eric Christ** » Sun, 28 Mar 1999 04:00:00

Ultrix was the unix flavor from DEC that ran on the MIPS based
DECstations. OSF/1, DUNIX, and Tru64 are the flavor built for
the Alpha architecture. Ultrix was never ported to Alpha.

-Eric Christy

> > As far as I know, g77 is stable on Alpha if somewhat slow.
> > Ultrix has never run on Alpha.

> Ultrix, OSF/1, DEC Unix, Tru64 what's the difference? I thought they were
> all different names for basically the same flavor of UNIX. Of course I
> realize there have been versions of Ultrix for the PDP-11, VAX, MIPS, and I
> could have sworn there was a Ultrix version also.

> Zane

> --
> One of these day's I've got to quit being lazy and come up with a signature.
> <<Yawn>>

by **Anton Er** » Sun, 28 Mar 1999 04:00:00

Quote:> Ultrix, OSF/1, DEC Unix, Tru64 what's the difference?

Ultrix is an OS based on BSD. It ran on Vaxen and DecStations and is
really outdated.

Digital OSF/1, Digital Unix, Tru64 Unix are different names for an OS
based on OSF/1 (which is based on Mach 2.5). It is a state-of-the-art
Unix (at least as far as the kernel's capabilities are concerned; you
have to install all the GNU utilities to make it usable).

If you can relate to that, the difference between Ultrix and DU is
similar to the difference between SunOS 4.x and Solaris 2.x.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed

http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html

by **Greg Linda** » Mon, 29 Mar 1999 04:00:00

> I have no standard benchmark for this. What we did is to

> run a nuclear reactor simulator with a standard case and

> count the cases per hour. A single PII 400MHz was roughly

> 50% as fast as a AlphaServer 500, and a dual PII 400 with

> SCSI and 130MB RAM was faster (about 10%).

Uh, was this the modern Alpha 21264 at 500 mhz, or the obselete Apha
21164 at 500 mhz? The new one is 2x as fast.

-- g

by **Dirk Grunwal** » Mon, 29 Mar 1999 04:00:00

> > I have no standard benchmark for this. What we did is to run a
> > nuclear reactor simulator with a standard case and count the cases
> > per hour. A single PII 400MHz was roughly 50% as fast as a
> > AlphaServer 500, and a dual PII 400 with SCSI and 130MB RAM was
> > faster (about 10%).

> Uh, was this the modern Alpha 21264 at 500 mhz, or the obselete Apha
> 21164 at 500 mhz? The new one is 2x as fast.

--

..and 4 times more expensive ($11,000 for a single-cpu EV6 vs. ~$2,500
for an EV5). Granted, that will change over time, but it's a critical
issue when comparing easy parallelizable applications.

--
Dirk Grunwald Assoc. Prof, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder,

by **Marcus Masko** » Mon, 29 Mar 1999 04:00:00

:> Where can I find info on the fastest Alpha chips
:> available (600Mhz?) and can anyone recommend a good
:> vendor?

If you really want the fastest Chip and price is not
important you can get a dual EV6 system (21264 Alpha
chip).

: The problem is not the chip but the F77/F90 support.

If I understand the adverti*ts from Microway in
the Linux Journal correctly you can get NDP Fortran
for Alpha. But I am not sure if it runs with Linux.

--
Marcus

No RISC - No fun!

by **Greg Linda** » Tue, 30 Mar 1999 04:00:00

> If I understand the adverti*ts from Microway in
> the Linux Journal correctly you can get NDP Fortran
> for Alpha. But I am not sure if it runs with Linux.

There are some 3rd party fortrans for AlphaLinux, but none have SPEC95
benchmark results, so we have reason to suspect that they suck. (If
any vendor would like me to run SPEC95 against their compiler, let me
know.)

-- g

Very Computer

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz

Mhz for Mhz, A Dec Alpha 500Mhz vs PIII 500Mhz