Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> just a note on CPUs...
>
> ron
>
I would love to see some AMD Athlon/Thunderbird specs
in the mix. These chips use the Alpha EV6's bus licensed
from DEC/Compaq.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 01:34:17 -0800 (PST)
> From: Matt Dillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Machines are getting too damn fast
>
> I was browsing CompUSA today and noticed they were selling Sony
> VAIO 1.3 and 1.5 GHz desktops, amoung other things. It's amazing
> how fast processors have gotten just in the last two years! I just
> had to pick up one of these babies and give it a run through to see
> how fast the RamBus memory is.
>
> I'm suitably impressed, at least when comparing it against other Intel
> cpu's. Intel is finally getting some decent memory bandwidth. I've
> included some memory copying tests below. The actual memory bandwidth
> is 2x what the test reports since it's a copy test.
>
> Sony 1.3 GHz Pentium 4 VAIO w/ 128MB RamBus memory (two 64MB RIMMs)
> 571.20 MBytes/sec (copy)
>
> 650 MHz Celleron (HP desktop, DIMM)
> 114.65 MBytes/sec (copy)
>
> 750 MHz P-III (2U VALINUX box, 2-cpu, 1024M ECC-DIMM)
> 162.20 MBytes/sec (copy)
>
> 700 MHz Celeron(?) (1U VALINUX box, 1-cpu, 128MB DIMM)
> 93.56 MBytes/sec (copy) <---- yuch
>
> 550 MHz P-III (4U Dell 2400, 1-cpu, 256MB DIMM)
> 225.92 MBytes/sec (copy)
>
> 600 MHz P-III (2U Dell 2450, 2-cpus, 512MB DIMM))
> 228.91 MBytes/sec (copy)
>
> I was somewhat disappointed with the VALINUX boxes, I expected them to
> be on par with the DELLs. In anycase, the Sony VAIO workstation with
> the RamBus memory blew the field away. The cpu is so fast that a
> buildworld I did was essentially I/O bound. I'll have to go and buy some
> more RamBus memory for the thing (it only came with 128MB), which is
> kinda of annoying seeing as I have a gigabyte worth of DIMMs just sitting
> on my desk :-( that I can't use.
>
> I'm tring to imagine 1.3 GHz. That's over a billion instructions
> a second. And in a few years with the new chip fab lithography
> standards it's going to be 10 GHz.
>
> We need to find something more interesting then buildworlds to do on
> these machines.
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