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SPEED AND THOUGHTS ON THE AMIGA WITH PA-RISC
Tim Cameron tim@ufrmsa1.olivetti.za
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I absolutely enjoyed the interview in AR3.02 with Chris Ludwig.
In fact I am glad the "3D-RISC" team chose the HP PA-RISC CPU as the basis
of the next AMIGA chip set. I have been lucky enough to actually work on
a HP 735/125 (48Z) machine with one of the "TOP" PA-RISC CPU's at its
heart. "WOW", this machine ZOOoooms along.
If this is the performance of the next AMIGA "GAMES" console, all I can
say to SEGA, NINTENDO etc, is good bye!!
As for the next AMIGA "COMPUTER", he! he! APPLE, INTEL etc, move over
here comes AMIGA PA-POOOWWWER MACHINES. >:)
"Let me slow down a bit and explain why I am ranting and raving so."
You see I've just completed a course at a company here, and there were +-
40 people connected to this HP machine. (Yea! so what you say, Not that
many people on the LAN.) No no no, CONNECTED TO THE HP MACHINE via the
LAN.
We were working on X-TERMINALS to this machine. i.e. NO PROCESSING POWER
where we sat, the HP machine did ALL the processing....
The speed that this machine handled all tasks was amazing. It was smooth
and a pleasure to work to. Editing, pre-processing etc FAST....
In contrast to this, about a year ago I did a "C" programming course on
an INTEL setup. i.e. 30-40 PC's working over the LAN to an INTEL file
server. The INTEL file server was a 486 at 33 MHz. (What a joke...
Pathetic)
The PC's were running Borland C, and ALL PROCESSING was on the local PC.
The only thing the file server was used for was DISK.
At times things were so pathetically slow, you could only gain a response
from your PC after a wait of over a minute. (Yea! That long....)
A short extract out of the interview to explain my point for this article.
>AN: So you're creating a custom HP-RISC for the Amiga.
>
>CL: Exactly, that was the plan, we're basically creating a custom PA-RISC
> chip based on the PA-150, the latest one, that would allow us to have
> really fantastic performance.
The PA-150 referred to by Chris is actually HP's PA7150 CPU running at
125MHz. "The new AMIGA running at 125MHz, OHoooww Yea! Cool." :)
Anyway enough of this drooling....
Below follows a chart of CPU performance, showing how fast the HP CPU's
are compared to others. The chart is sorted according to SPEC fp92, as
this is VERY important to all those who render images.
I must admit to not including any MC680x0 SPEC's as I could not get hold
of any. :(
** Note **
SPEC int92
This is a bunch of routines to test integer performance of the CPU under
test.
SPEC fp92
This is a bunch of routines to test floating point performance of the CPU
under test.
These test are much more accurate than tests showing MIPS, as a common job
is actually been done.
The only margin for error is in the compilers used on the different
machines, and this is very small.
You will notice that HP is only second to DEC, and that is ONLY because of
the clock speed of the DEC CPU's. Run them at the same speed and the HP
CPU's walk all over DEC's (alpha) CPU's.
MACHINE NAME CPU/FPU Clock SPEC SPEC
MHz Int92 Fp92
DEC 3900 AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 275 189 264
DEC 3700 AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 225 163 231
HP 735/125 (48Z) PA7150/int 125 136 201
HP 755/125 (48Z) PA7150/int 125 133 196
DEC 3800 AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 200 130 184
HP 755CRX PA7100/int 99 109 168
HP 735/99 PA7100/int 99 109 168
HP 735CRX PA7100/int 99 109 168
DEC 3600 AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 175 114 162
HP 745i/100 PA7100/int 100 106 155
HP 715/100 (HCRXZ) PA7100LC/int 100 100 137
HP 743i/100 PA7100LC/int 100 100 137
HP 715/75C PA7100/int 75 80 127
HP 712/80 (HC) PA7100LC/int 80 84 122
HP 715/80 (HCRXZ) PA7100LC/int 80 84 121
HP 712/80i PA7100LC/int 80 84 115
SUN SPARC STATION 20/61 SUPERSPARC/int 60 89 103
DEC 3300X AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 175 90 97
HP 715/64 (HCRXZ) PA7100LC/int 64 67 97
HP 743i/64 PA7100LC/int 64 67 97
SGI R4400SC INDY XZ R4400SC 150 88 97
SGI INDIGO2 EXTREME R4400/R4010 150 86 94
DEC 3300 AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 150 66 92
HP 730CRX PA7000 66 52 87
HP 750CRX PA7000 66 51 85
HP 712/60 (HC) PA7100LC/int 60 58 85
SUN SPARC STATION 20/51 SUPERSPARC/int 50 74 85
SUN SS10 MODEL 51 SUPERSPARC 50 65 83
INTEL XPRESS 815/100 PENTIUM 100 100 81
HP 745i/50 PA7100/int 50 49 79
HP 715/50C PA7100/int 50 49 79
HP 712/60 PA7100LC/int 60 58 79
SUN SPARC STATION 20/50 SUPERSPARC/int 50 69 79
IBM 250,25T/S/W GXT150 POWER PC 601 67 63 76
INTEL XPRESS 735/90 PENTIUM 90 90 73
DEC 3300LX AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 125 68 73
SGI R4600SC INDY XZ R4600SC 133 94 73
HP 720CRX PA7000 50 39 66
DEC 3300L AXP (ALPHA) AXP 21064 100 46 64
COMPAQ SYSTEMPRO/XL 5/66 PENTIUM 67 65 64
SGI R4000SC INDY R4000SC 100 58 63
SGI INDIGO R4000 ELAN R4000/int 100 59 62
INTEL XPRESS/MX PENTIUM 67 65 60
SUN SS10 MODEL 40 SUPERSPARC 40 50 60
HP 710C PA7100 50 33 56
SUN SPARC STATION 5/85 MICROSPARCII/int 85 64 55
SUN SS10 MODEL 30/30LC SUPERSPARC 36 45 54
HP 715/33C PA7100/int 33 33 52
SGI R4600PC INDY XZ R4600PC 100 63 50
SUN SPARC STATION 5/70 MICROSPARCII/int 70 57 47
HP 705C PA7000 33 23 39
SGI R4000PC INDY R4000PC 100 36 37
SUN SPARC STATION 2 CY7C601/int 40 22 23
SUN SPARC STATION IPX FJMB86903/int 40 22 22
SUN SPARC CLASSIC MICROSPARC 50 26 21
SUN SPARC LX MICROSPARC 50 26 21
SUN SPARC CLASSIC X GX MICROSPARC 50 26 21
COMPAQ DESKPRO 66M i80486DX2 66 32 16
COMPAQ DESKPRO 50M i80486DX2 50 26 12
COMPAQ DESKPRO 486/33 i80486DX 33 18 8