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- From: ramesh@veda (Ramesh Dodamani)
- Subject: Number-Crunching on the NeXT(Comparison with SUNs) - Summary
- Message-ID: <1992Jul25.004939.16238@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
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- Reply-To: ramesh@veda.cwru.edu
- Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
- Date: Sat, 25 Jul 92 00:49:39 GMT
- Lines: 143
-
-
- Hi Friends
-
- Here is the summary from all the responses that I got regarding
- Number-Crunching on the NeXT:
-
- The SPARC 2 is slightly faster than the NeXT Turbo when it comes to scientific
- engineering applications. With an application compiled with one of the Fortran
- Compilers, the NeXT is as good as a SPARC 2. Since the current C compiler and
- libraries are not very efficient, when it comes to transcedental functions(Sin,
- Cos etc), applications written in C run much slower.
-
- The Conclusion: We will be going for a NeXT Turbo.
-
- Here is what the other users had to say:
-
- *******************************************************
- From: "Christopher Penrose" <penrose@silvertone.Princeton.EDU>
-
- I have used Sparcstation 1+ 's and a 25MHz 68040 NeXT is
- comparable in performance. I have used intensive signal
- processing algorithms (FFTs) repeatedly. Given the
- same number crunching performance, I would definitely
- choose the NeXT. Its operating system advantages (Mach)
- and its window and development environment (NeXTstep)
- have many advantages over Solaris and their typical
- kludgey X-windows environments.
-
-
- Christopher
-
- **************************************************************
- From: m@crito.Stanford.EDU (M Carling)
-
- A 33MHz NeXT is in the same class as a SPARC II. The Sun might be 10% faster.
-
- M Carling
- Director, Bay Area NeXT Group
-
- **************************************************************
- From: <Steve.Johnson@math.tamu.edu>
-
- I have used both and have found the Sun to be up to 50% faster. The
- NeXT does very poorly on transcendentals (sin, cos, ...), so Fourier
- transforms and other apps are quite slow. If you're really looking
- for speed, look at the HP & IBM boxes. However, I'm not at all impressed
- by their respective OS's.
-
- Standard disclaimers, as usual.
-
- - Steve Johnson, Systems Manager, Dept of Mathematics, Texas A&M University
-
- **************************************************************
- From: k0s8160@chenext1.tamu.edu (Kenji Seto)
-
- I can't compare it with a Sun, but I am running an extremely large simulation,
- on the NeXT and a Cray-YMP. For CPU equivalence,
- 1 Cray cpu-hour = 20 Next 040-turbo hours
-
- This is only approximate, +/- 3 hours.
- Hope this helps....Kenji
-
- *************************************************************
- From: matt@zeb.ame.nd.edu (Matthew J. Grismer)
-
- Using the Absoft Fortran compiler, I have achieved about the same performance
- as a Sparc 2 with a NeXTstation (not turbo). This is for computational fluid
- dynamics types of applications. I do have one code that for some reason runs
- about as fast as a Sparc 1, but I didn't write it, so I am not sure what the
- difference is. If you use C, the current version of the C compiler that comes
- with the Next does not do trancendentals well, but I believe that is fixed in
- NeXTSTEP 3.0. Actually, I have heard that Sunworld magazine reviewed a
- NeXTstation turbo, and rated it higher overall than the Sparc 2. Overwall, I am
- quite pleased with the number crunching abilitity of my station. I hope this
- helps.
-
- MJG
- NeXTmail preferred
-
- **************************************************************
- From: tennant@alph.msfc.nasa.gov (Allyn Tennant)
-
- The floating point specmarks show that the SPARC 2 machines are faster than
- the NeXT, however, the NeXT is very competitive with the cheaper SPARC 1
- machines.
- I believe the NeXTstation is slightly faster than the IPC and of course, the
- turbo is slightly faster yet. This agrees with my experience with running
- my software on the two machines.
-
- Of course, if you want speed you should get an HP computer.
-
- For Mathematica the NeXT is VERY fast. We find that Mathematica on a
- NeXTstation
- is 10-20% faster than an IBM RS6000 model 320. We do not have Mathematica on a
- SUN so we can't compare, however, I've seen a couple of reports on the Net that
- indicate that the NeXT is faster.
-
- My work mostly involves time series analysis of data collect from X-ray
- astronomy satellites. I use the Oasys Green Hill Fortran compiler which is
- fairly good and supports most VMS extensions.
-
- Allyn
-
- **************************************************************
- From: Nicolas Strobel <strobel@dirac.phys.washington.edu>
-
- Depends on what kind of floating point operations you're wanting to do.
- Transcendentals, and some other floating point operations are trapped in
- the kernel and are emulated through software (so they're slow), but you
- can get around that by using lookup tables. These are the floating point
- instructions done in *hardware* on the 040:
-
- fmove, fsmove,fcmp,fsabs,fsnet,fadd,fdiv,fbcc,fdbcc,fsadd,fsmul,fdadd,fdmul,
- fsqrt,fdsqrt,fsave,fmovem,fdmove,fabs,fdabs,fneg,fdneg,fsub,fmul,fscc,ftrapcc,
- fssub,fsdiv,fdsub,fddiv,fssqrt,frestore
-
- I don't know what all of these do--I just have this list of things in front of
- me--but you can see things like abs,add,subtract,multiply,divide,sqrt,negate.
- The other floating point operations are emulated through an obsolete software
- library (motorola has a newer better version that did not make it into
- 2.X).
-
- For the hardware instructions the NeXT 040 (25 MHz) is faster than a Sparc 1+.
- The turbo compares well with a sparc 2. Using lookup tables, people have
- speeded up the transcendentals (sin,cos,exp, etc.) evaluation tremendously.
- Some person posted a note to the net about a library of lookup tables for the
- transcendentals he created. I can check around for the posting, if you'd like
- more info.
-
- If you want to do some serious number crunching on a workstation, you should
- look at IBM RS6000's, HP's with the PA-Risc chips, or Dec 5000's. If you
- want a nice general purpose workstation that is friendly, intuitive
- plug-and-play, has award winning software, and alright for some number
- crunching, the NeXT is the one to use.
-
- Nick
- strobel@dirac.phys.washington.edu
- ***************************************************************
-
- Ramesh
-
- --
-