gauging interest in VAX 6000-530

From: Mike Cheponis <mac_at_Wireless.Com>
Date: Sun Oct 24 23:35:50 1999

> <It states: "The VAX 6500 processor delivered approximately 13 times the
> <power of a VAX-11/780 system, per processor."

> Your confusing the price of bricks with the weight of concrete.
> The MIPS metric is not accurate, I don't know if there is one.

What I'm saying is: If you run the Dhrystone 2.1 benchmark on a dx2/66 and
also on a VAX 6500, it'll run 2 to 3 times faster on the dx2/66.

That's -all- I'm saying!


>>To me, that means "13 MIPS". 13 MIPS is about 2 to almost 3 times slower
>>than a 486dx2/66.

> Until you fill memory. then the contest reverses. The 486s of the time
> were doing good at maybe 5meg bytes/sec and thats SLOW. The real test
> then and now is what the system does with relational database of say
> 100mb is size.

It's a different test. I didn't say anything about relational database
performance.

> < System OS CPU (MHz) V1.1 V2.1
> < ---------------------- ------------ ----------- ----- ------ ------
> < VAX 8650 4.3 BSD ----------- 18 6.3 6.2
> < cc -non_shared -DUNIX -O5 -ifo
>
> It's a non compare as an 8650 is not a 6000 anything. there are differnet
> memory bandwidths and IO bandwiths in effect and the slowest is much faster
> in action than an 8650.
>
>>And, back of the envelope, the 6500 was 2x the 8650.

I was trying to get a handle on -real numbers- for the 8650, based on
numbers that are known. There are no performance numbers published for the
6500 that I am aware of.


> <I don't know what it is about collectors that somehow confuses their
> <memories of the past; maybe their internal core memories have suffered som
> <bit flips? ;-) (I have some old junk, too, so I consider myself in the
> <same camp...)
>
> Well, first of I'm not your average retrorevionist PC collector. I worked
> for DEC for 10 years (83-93) spanning the era in quesiton.

Nor am I, I guess (is there an "average" retro geek?). I worked at DEC
'73-'75 in Marlboro. (We built 10s and 20s there). I had Ken Olsen over
for dinner and asked him about what it would take to get the PDP-11 out
there competing with these newfangled microprocessors (y'all know what Ken
thought about micros...). And I still have a copy of a memo I sent to Gordon
Bell, suggesting that we put the PDP-10 on a board and sell -that- into the
home market (and Gordon said: do it! and it was done, but several years
later...). This was in 1975, mind you...



> Oh, and I've used a VS3100 recently as a server at work for test purposes
> and the 3100/m10E clobbered the P166mmx/scsi box running NT.

Is this VS3100 actually an Alpha? If so, I have always realized the
superiority of the Alpha. No contest.


> Yes, I know and have done. I've tried to run a p133 as a unix host (not
> a web server) as a timeshare client and it doesn't load as well as the
> VS2000 I have. The 8080 timeshare FYI had terrible latency!

Consider the 8080 timeshare (like the pdp-8 timeshare): It's like the
dancing elephant - it's amazing enough that the elephant dances!


> <Now, let's talk about busses. Just how fast -was- this CI? Let's compare
> <that with 66 MHz 64-bit PCI, which has 66e6 x 64 = 4,224,000,000 bits/sec
> <peak throughput. What was CI's throughput?

> CI, cluster innerconnect was was fast when PCs were running ISA-16. If
> memory serves it was a 24-32mbytes/s rate. PCI-66 is now, and slow Alphas
> use it. The difference is you could have multiple CI busses and sorry but,
> only one PCI.

Indeed, CI is 8 times faster than ISA-16.

CI (at 32 MB/sec) is 256 Megabits/sec. Therefore, you can hang 16 CI bus
adaptors onto a 66 MHz / 64-bit PCI bus.



> But then when VAX was running CI what was the PC running? OK ISA-1 at
> some 8meg bytes/sec and memory interfaces were typically 70ns 32bit wide
> non-interleaved with caches. SCSI was maybe 10mb/s. the less than
> popular MCA bussed IBM hardware were much fast than the ISA and VL bussed
> counterparts.

Wait! I'm -not- saying that the PC world when the VAX 8650 was introduced
was equivalent.

ALL I'M TRYING TO DO is to put some perspective on CPU performance of this
old obsolete VAX iron.

I'm not even saying that the people at DEC were stupid, lacked foresight,
or anything like that at all!

I'm -merely- trying to understand the single-user performance of that old
iron in light of new iron (that I can actually benchmark).


> The point being your trying to save your arguement with _now_ hardware
> against _then_ hardware. PCs with then hardware were the industry joke
> for uptime, reliablility and performance, the AS400s, VAX, Prime, and
> others were the systems choice for getting work done on the larger scale.

Again, I dunno what kind of PCs you people were using, but I have not had
PC reliability problems. Maybe I'm unusual in that respect.


> PCs in many ways are still behind the "big iron" of the early 90s, as
> they still lack a really good OS (linux, freebsd are contenders though).

> The hardware is not mature, they keep creating new standards that barely
> get debugged before they are pass`e. It's always amazing to see older
> systems bumping along getting real work done, usually while the PC user
> is rebooting for the third time today.
>
>
> Allison

Again, I don't reboot my non-Windows PCs at all.

But for those old systems? Sooner or later, the maintenance costs will become
too high, and the Itaniums will replace 'em, eh?

-mac
Received on Sun Oct 24 1999 - 23:35:50 BST