Workstation/server chip comparisons (intel, digital, sun, etc):
smh.com.au
<<As Intel catches up and moves very much into the workstation environment, it will bring its manufacturing
processes and its economies of scale to bear. And you can add to that the potential of the Microsoft juggernaut.
If you boil it down to a simple criterion of performance versus
cost, particularly if you base it on the SPEC benchmark results,
you would have to say that the Pentium II offers the best value.
But its floating-point performance still has to improve before it
starts matching most of the processors mentioned here.
>>
<<The problem the Alpha has faced during its rocky history has been a lack of promotion but also a dearth of
software, not to mention significantly higher prices.
It has rarely been with the processor itself. While Intel's 400MHz Pentium II processor scored 12.4 on the
SPECfp95 benchmark, the new 21264 running at 500MHz is, according to Digital, giving scores of about 50 - or
about four times the floating-point performance. Digital's United States headquarters is expecting the first 21264s
to ship later this year.>>
The Power2 Super Chip runs at 160MHz, but don't let the clock speed fool you.
Despite what might seem a rather pedestrian rate, the Power2 processor has plenty of floating-point performance.
While its integer performance under SPECint95 rates only an 8.62 - just over half that of a 400MHz Pentium II,
its floating-point performance under SPECfp95 is an impressive 26.6, more than double the top-line Pentium II.
One of the areas that really helps the Power2 pack a wallop is its 160Kb of Level-1 cache memory. Compare
that with the Pentium II's 32Kb.>>
This RISC-based chip runs at a top speed of 360MHz and with Sun's top-line Ultra 60 workstation supporting
two of these processors, its floating point performance hits a top of 29.5.
But what helps this out is the amount of cache memory built into the system. With a whopping 4Mb of L2 cache,
it makes the 512Kb on the Pentium II look downright ordinary.
And that is what you will find with many of these RISC-based systems - mountains of cache memory.>>
How do you think cached up Xeon stacks up. |
