From owner-freebsd-questions Sat May 11 09:23:11 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id JAA19500 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 11 May 1996 09:23:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tuminfo2.informatik.tu-muenchen.de (root@tuminfo2.informatik.tu-muenchen.de [131.159.0.81]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA19495 for ; Sat, 11 May 1996 09:23:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sunsystem5.informatik.tu-muenchen.de ([131.159.0.125]) by tuminfo2.informatik.tu-muenchen.de with ESMTP id <26577-3>; Sat, 11 May 1996 18:22:55 +0200 Received: by sunsystem5.informatik.tu-muenchen.de id <15879>; Sat, 11 May 1996 18:22:45 +0200 To: freebsd-questions@freefall.FreeBSD.org Path: news From: hafner@suncog2.forwiss.tu-muenchen.de (Walter 'madhouse' Hafner) Newsgroups: muc.lists.freebsd.questions Subject: Re: Highperformance X server machine Q Date: 11 May 1996 16:22:41 GMT Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany Lines: 61 Message-ID: References: <199605111510.RAA18673@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: suncog2.forwiss.tu-muenchen.de In-reply-to: kuku@gilberto.physik.RWTH-Aachen.DE's message of 11 May 1996 17:26:52 +0200 Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >>On 11 May 1996 17:26:52 +0200, kuku@gilberto.physik.RWTH-Aachen.DE (Christoph P. Kukulies) said: CPK> I just had a talk with a guy who wanted to buy a used 24bit plane CPK> HP 715/50 and I advised him to take FreeBSD and a well equipped CPK> P166 with a good graphics card. He was a bit reluctant when he CPK> first thought I wanted to recommend Linux and XFree86 :-). CPK> Any recommendations ? He wants to do image processing on that machine. Well, we DO nothing but image processing on our machines ... Among other types we got HP's, Sparcs and a P100 with a Matrox Millenium. Our institute developed a high performance image processing tool (HORUS) with about 700 image processing operators. Our "standard" benchmark is a series of filter operations on an image. The main thing the benchmark does is a "laws" filter on a byte image. The result is a long image. Then it does "laws" on the long image with a byte image as result, and so on. So the benchmark tests mainly the integer and the memory throughput of the processor (which are BY FAR the most important operations in image processing. Floating point is rarely used ...) I let the benchmark results speak for themselves: HP 712/60: 17.6s HP 735/100: 11.7s Sparc/10: 17.9s Sparc/20: 12.1s Ultra Sparc (32 bit): 4.9s Ultra Sparc (64 bit): 4.5s SGI Indigo2: 6.4s SGI Indy: 15.9s DEC 3000 Modell 600 AXP (175 MHz): 10.0s DEC AlphaStation 600 5/266: 5.4s Pentium 100MHz (FreeBSD 2.0.5): 12.3s Pentium 100MHz (Windows NT): 19.2s We get roughly the same results, when we run our most complex application (detection and tracking of humans in image sequences) on the machines: On the SS20 and the P100 we need about 1.6 s/image. On the Ultra and the Alpha we need about 0.7 s/image. Oh, yes: The Pentium was in 24 bit mode under XAccel 1.2, while all other machines were in 8 bit mode. So I recommend against the 715 (depending on teh price, of course). He should buy a Pentium/Pentium-Pro with a fast graphic card and XAccel. Or an Ultra, of course. :-) My 2 cents, -Walter PS: Note the difference between FreeBSD and NT on the same machine. *GRIN* -- Walter Hafner____________________________ hafner@forwiss.tu-muenchen.de FORWISS Muenchen, FG Kognitive Systeme, Raum O-134, Tel: 089/48095-220 Netscape*documentColorsHavePriority: false Netscape*blinkingEnabled: false *CLICK*