On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:11:50 -0700, Dean Kent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Actually, I was rounding a bit. My original post on the subject indicated >that the span for x86 comparisons was Nov 2000 thru June 2006 (as I was >trying to use roughly the same period as in the post I was responding to at >the time), and the increase was from 5.8 to 63.6, so the numbers should be a >7.95x increase in just over 5 1/2 years. > > >However you slice it, x86 processor performance has increased at roughly >twice the rate as mainframe processor performance. I know that some here >will take this as an insult, or a put down, or some attempt to make the >mainframe look bad. It is, however, simply a reasonable conclusion based >upon the available evidence. If someone has different data, please present >it rather than just taking umbrage and arguing about little details that are >not really important. If we want to talk fallacies, that's known as a >Straw Man. > > How much useful work gets accomplished is far more relevant than ratios of performance improvements over some number of years. When the x86 processor is performing the same amount of work as a z9 engine than we can consider it has caught up. In any article I have read, the faster you have something working the harder it is to eek out a gain. So if the x86 is starting at a snails pace, it is far easier to make a bigger performance gain. When it is humming like a z9 engine we can then look to see what ratio of improvement it achieves after that. If it can sustain the 7.95x ratio then chalk it up to it had plenty of room for improvement in the beginning. If the ratio starts to trail off then boasting about the 7.95x ratio was ignoring where it started from. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
