From owner-freebsd-alpha Fri Sep 3 1: 4: 4 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from herring.nlsystems.com (nlsys.demon.co.uk [158.152.125.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5349B14CEE for ; Fri, 3 Sep 1999 01:03:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dfr@nlsystems.com) Received: from salmon.nlsystems.com (salmon.nlsystems.com [10.0.0.3]) by herring.nlsystems.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA11947; Fri, 3 Sep 1999 09:05:35 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from dfr@nlsystems.com) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 09:05:35 +0100 (BST) From: Doug Rabson To: John Polstra Cc: alpha@freebsd.org Subject: Re: relative alpha speed In-Reply-To: <199909030416.VAA07533@vashon.polstra.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, John Polstra wrote: > In article , > Doug Rabson wrote: > > On Wed, 1 Sep 1999 jon@cops.com wrote: > > > > > I am a little perplexed about all of this. If the performance and > > > disk space usage are better on intel what benefit do I have using > > > an alpha instead of an intel... besides just being cooler than all > > > of my intel friends? > > > > Floating point performance rocks compared to intel. > > ... until you make the Alpha conform to the IEEE FP rules and handle > the whole range of numbers it is supposed to handle (-mieee). Then it > becomes much slower than ix86 once again. I've been disappointed in > the performance of the Alphas, given that performance is supposed to > be their strong point. I think the problem may be with our compiler. I don't think the penalty for using -mieee ought to be so high. I wonder how well the Compaq compiler deals with this. -- Doug Rabson Mail: dfr@nlsystems.com Nonlinear Systems Ltd. Phone: +44 181 442 9037 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message