Performance of VAX/780/750, Pyramid & Sun
Partha Dasgupta
The following are some performance figures for a VAX780, a VAX750,
the new Pyramid and a SUN-1. They are not standardized benchmarks, but
do provide some comparisons....
The 780 has Berkeley 4.1, while all the others ran 4.2bsd.
1) C-CARD : A CPU intensive, recursive card arranging routine,
written in C.
2) P-CARD : The exact same program, written in Pascal.
3) GREP : The command "grep 11 /usr/dict/words". Has considerable CPU
and i/o activity.
4) SWAP : A tough one. Initializes a 1 Meg integer array twice. Uses
4 Meg bytes of core (2 Meg on SUN), and causes a lot of swapping,
possibly thrashing. It favors the SUN, but the SUN has a slower swapping
disk, and less core.
Part I: Low Load tests
This part was done at low load. I was the only person logged in. The
data shows the CPU time used by the user process and the system, and
the elapsed time. The elapsed time for VAX780 is omitted as there
were a lot of background stuff running.
1) C-CARD
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX-780 6.8s 0.1s --
VAX-750 13.3s 0.1s 14s
SUN 13.9s 0.1s 14s
Pyramid 3.4s 0.1s 4s
2) P-CARD
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX780 23.3s 1.0s --
VAX750 32.5s 0.4s 33s
SUN 41.0s 0.4s 42s
Pyramid 3.4s 0.1s 4s
3) GREP
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX780 3.4s 0.8s --
VAX750 6.8s 0.9s 8s
SUN 6.8s 0.9s 8s
Pyramid 3.3s 0.5s 4s
4) SWAP! (Note the dramatic rise in system CPU times. Caused by
swapping too much?)
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX780 13.6s 11.5s ---
VAX750 22.7s 23.1s 1:30s
SUN 33.1s 158.0s 5:56s
Pyramid 5.4s 5.9s 0:58s
Part II : High load testing.
This was done by loading the system by up to 20 processes of the same
command. 1) to 3) was run as 20 simultaneous processes. Naturally
load average reached nearly 20. The figures are averages, per process.
The SWAP! program could not be handled in large numbers. The Pyramid
allowed 6 processes before saying "No more core". The 780, 750 and SUN
gave up after 3 processes. The figures are for 5 processes on Pyramid
and 3 on 780/750/SUN.
1) C-CARD (20 processes)
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX780 6.8s 0.2s 2:15s
VAX750 13.4s 0.4s 4:37s
SUN 16.0s 0.6s 5:28s
Pyramid 3.4s 0.1s 1:04s
2)P-CARD (20 processes)
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX780 (no data)
VAX750 33.5s 0.6s 11:10s
SUN 47.8s 3.9 16:00s
Pyramid 3.4s 0.1s 1:06s (!!)
3) GREP (20 processes)
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX780 3.5s 0.9s 1:20s
VAX750 7.0s 0.8s 2:45s
SUN 7.5s 1.4s 2:50s
Pyramid 4.0s 0.5s 1:20s
4) SWAP! : This program brought all the systems to their knees. They
probably thrashed badly. Even echoing characters on the terminal
seemed to be a problem! The sun especially has a small slow swapping
disk and was the hardest hit.
User-CPU System-CPU Elapsed time
VAX780 (3 processes) 14.0s 14.0s 3:40s
VAX750 (3 processes) 23.5s 23.1s 4:26s
SUN (3 processes) 35.6s 104.0s 13:00s
Pyramid (3 processes) 5.9s(!) 6.0s 2:30s
Pyramid (5 processes) 5.9s 6.0s 4:17s
Thus the Pyramid-90 seems to be a winner. However the tiny SUN's
performance was astounding. It matched the 750 all the time, except
for the SWAP program, but then its disk is mainly to blame. Makes one
wonder whether a 750 is really worth it, when a el-cheapo M68000 can
get this sort of performance.
(There has been a lot of mud slinging at the Sun on the net. I agree
its not very impressive when run on its bitmap screen in single user
mode, but on the ethernet, with a couple of users logged in it really
looks as good (or bad?) as a 750. Wonder if you would notice it if
someone yanked out your 750, and put in a Sun....)
Partha Dasgupta
SUNY Stony Brook
...allegra!sbcs!partha
Mark Callow
as questionable due to the claim of running them on a Sun-1 under
4.2BSD. There is no such beast (unless you did it yourself; if so
I like to know how you dealt with page faults).
You might have a Sun-1.5 running 4.1c (which Sun have referred to
as the Berkeley Beta Release of 4.2). The Sun-1.5 is very slow
due to an additional wait state Sun had to add. The 4.1c release
(Sun 0.4) is very unloved around here. People found it slow and
liable to crash.
Now a Sun-2 running 4.2 (Sun Release 1.1) is a very different proposition.
It is fast (Our users perceive it as twice as fast as Sun1.5/4.1c). It
is also reliable. It would make a very nice personal computer.
--
From the TARDIS of Mark Callow
m...@qubix.UUCP, qubix!m...@decwrl.ARPA
...{decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!qubix!msc, ...{amd,ihnp4,ittvax}!qubix!msc
"Nothing shocks me. I'm an Engineer."
Partha Dasgupta
back. I regret there was an error, the SUN used was not a SUN-1 as I
had said but a SUN-2. Sorry. I stand corrected.
Partha Dasgupta
SUNY/Stony Brook.
er...@milo.uucp
I must beg to differ. I currently have on loan a Sun-1 from Sun
which has 4.2 running on it. It may no longer be a product, but it does
exist.
--
eric
...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric
Tim Mann
with the difference between the Sun Model 100 and 120. The Model 100 is the
old style unit with the black and white metal case and the backplane under
the monitor. These originally came with Sun-1 processors, but can be
upgraded to be Sun-2's. The Model 120 is the new style with the grey
plastic case and the backplane in a separate box. Model 120's all have
Sun-2 processors. Around here we talk about the Sun-1/100, the Sun-2/100,
and the Sun-2/120 to make the distinction clear. (We'll ignore the 150 and
170 for now.)
At any rate, 4.2 Unix runs only on Sun-2 processors, and definitely not on
Sun-1's. (To further confuse the issue, there were some "Sun-1.5"
processors shipped which ran 4.1c Unix. These should all have been upgraded
to Sun-2's by this time.)
--Tim