🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4jjusu$484@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>, veakblad@Glue.umd.edu
(David T. Wang) wrote:

Wow, a reasonable respndent. So:

> Mel Martinez (mem@jhu.edu) wrote:
> 
> : Mathematica?
> 
> sure, Mathematica, like Photoshop, if I recall correctly, were more "Mac
> Friendly" Apps, and did see to perform nicely on most Macs.  However,
> I haven't seen any standardized Mathematica benchmark which compared a 
> high end PPC604 to a PPro box.  Please post again when you have something.

MMA benchmarks are available on http://smc.vnet.net/mathbench.html. There
is nothing that I've seen on P6; the fastest Intel chip represented is a
166 mhz Pentium. It loses, although not by much, to the 132 mhz 604.

I would suggest that the PPro advocates post to the MMA list! If you want
to say that PPro is so much faster than the 604, please feel free to post
results on the MMA site. I think it speaks *volumes* about the true
availability of PPro machines that there is still no PPro result on the
MMA test site! The results are mailed in by users, but so far no results.
That is strange, since I would think that the power users who want P6
machines would also include at least a few MMA users.

Ironically, this thread was originally titled, over a year ago(!)
"PowerMac trounces Pentium with Mathematica". At the time, it was
certainly true: PowerMacs were running MMA tests TWICE as fast as the best
Pentium systems. The comment is no longer true; the P5 and P6 machines
have gained a lot of ground. A tribute to Intel. Also, the thing that is
never stated in the MMA tests is that MMA does so well on PMac because the
kernel is compiled with the IBM RS/600-based xlc compiler! How's that for
truth in advocacy?

> There have been rumblings from Mr Ragosta on this precise topic about MacWay's
> private mailings that with a new compiler, the PMac9500's numbers jumped to 
> something like 5.7 QMIPs, and that the best they could obtain on the PPro
> was a 4.0

I would like to hear more about that, something better than "private
communication" for a reference.

> (personal side note. from looking at all those numbers above, I have come 
> to the conclusion that the PPC604 is approximately 10% faster at the same
> clock speed than Pentium, given roughly equivalent configurations, i.e. 
> same L2 cache size.  However, Pentiums are currently available at a slightly 
> faster clock speed. 

I would quibble over the 10%...it's more like 20%, at least. This is
pretty well settled...the debate is over 604/604e vs P6.

>Incidently, PPC604's have 3.6 million transistors, and
> Pentiums have 3.3 million, so the performace per transistor-MHz for the 
> two chips are very very roughly, the same. However, Intel appears to have
> an advantage at this time, due to difference in process technology. Intel's
> 133, 150 and 166 Mhz Pentiums are all fabbed on Intel's .35 micron process
> technology, and IBM's PPC604 100, 120 and 133 MHz [the 150 Mhz process 
> technology is under dispute, no reputable source for clarification] are
> all fabbed on the .5 micron process. Bottom line is that the Pentium die
> is 90 mm^2, and the PPC604 die is 196 mm^2 and so Intel could get 2 
> pentiums out of the same piece of silicon for every 604 that IBM could
> make.)

Maybe. You forgot YIELD. Nobody knows the relative yields on 604 vs P5.
Conventional wisdom is that yields are supposed to be higher on RISC
chips?
I am no process engineer, so perhaps someone who is can provide some real
information. We sure aren't gonna find out from the companies...it's
information that they don't reveal. The only thing that I think can be
said fairly safely is that P6 yields are probably a LOT lower than P5 or
604...it can't be easy to get that huge full speed cache working on every
chip.