Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 16:16:27 +1000 From: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au> To: Wilko Bulte <wkb@freebie.xs4all.nl>, Gorm Jorgensen <Gorm@Area51.DK> Cc: alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Alpha CPU Performance vs i386 Message-ID: <20020515161627.O18023@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20020514222344.A2915@freebie.xs4all.nl>; from wkb@freebie.xs4all.nl on Tue, May 14, 2002 at 10:23:44PM %2B0200 References: <20020514201923.GK37326@Area51.DK> <20020514222344.A2915@freebie.xs4all.nl>
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On 2002-May-14 22:23:44 +0200, Wilko Bulte <wkb@freebie.xs4all.nl> wrote: >On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 10:19:23PM +0200, Gorm Jorgensen wrote: >> >> I can't seem to find any specs on how an Alpha 500 MHz is performing vs an >> Intel 500MHz. BTW, you can't just say "Alpha 500 MHz". An EV6/500 in an ES40 is roughly twice as fast as an EV5/466 in an AS4100. >> Is Alpha faster, slower or generally the same ? > >FP faster, integer is ?? Note that correctly supporting IEEE FP will significantly hit Alpha performance - maybe 20-30% slower, _much_ worse if you have lots of non-finite numbers (denormals, infinities and NaNs). The hit should be slightly less on the latest AXP chips which support precise FP exceptions. My gut feeling is that an AS4100 EV5/466 is roughly on a par with a PII-266 integer-wise. At the low end, a Multia (LCA/166) is slightly better than a 486DX2-50 on worldstones. Since I'm currently waiting for it to finish - ssh between an ES40 EV6/500 and a PIII-600 suggests that the PIII-600 is around 50% faster at running blowfish. [In the last case, ssh and ssl were compiled using Compaq ccc with '-tune host -arch host' on the Alpha]. As someone else noted, memory and I/O bandwidth on most Alphas is far better than PCs. (The Multia and other LCA machines are probably the only exceptions). Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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