Conference 7.286::digital

What is the source for .0?  It sounds interesting and I'd like to 
use it further.

RE:            <<< Note 2387.1 by NLA0::ONO "The Wrong Stuff" >>>

>>What is the source for .0?  It sounds interesting and I'd like to 
>>use it further.

     Newsbytes, from a CLARInet group on the Usenet.  You don't want to use
it outside of DEC because there are licensing concerns.  Posting it internally
should be no problem (we paid da bucks).

                                     Greg

    Ah so the truth comes out! I often expected that Alpha would not be
    much of a thorn to Intel because it is so "hot." (e.g. like a toaster.)
    Higher power consumption is one method to acheive higher speed, its an
    envelope pusher. I had not expected that Pentium was to be in limited
    quantities and "hot." If this is the case, Alpha may fare well. I say
    may because it is rather obvious that the volume of software will be
    Intel based and hence we would need the application running emulated to
    exceed 486 (I know I know, the win 32 apis run at speed, but I still
    want to see the total result to be convinced.)
    
    Tom

    NS COMPUTER NEWS:                            Tracy Talcott, VNS
    Computer Desk
    -                                            Littleton, MA, USA           
    
    
               
                       The VOGON News Service
    
    Edition : 2792              Tuesday 23-Mar-1993     Circulation:  7080
    
            {The Wall Street Journal, 22-Mar-93, p. A3}
       When Intel announces today that it has begun shipping production
    versions of the Pentium, it doesn't plan to discuss perhaps the most 
    important detail:price.But according to sources familiar with Intel's 
    plans, the list prices for the chip will allow PC makers to sell desktop 
    Pentium machines at prices that are relatively low for new-generation 
    machines.PC makers say they expect their first Pentium machines - due out 
    in May - to list for as little as $4,500.  That's half the list price for 
    the first machines built around Intel's current flagship, the 486, after 
    it was introduced in 1989 and only about 50% more than a typical 
    mail-order machine sells for today.Low-priced Pentium machines could
    put new downward pressure on PC prices and hasten the shift among PC 
    buyers to Intel's new technology.But that's exactly what Intel wants. 
    According to sources familiar with Intel's plans for the
    first two versions of the chip, the company has listed a slower,
    "60-megahertz," version at $905 each in lots of 1000 chips, but has 
    discounted the price to about $850 each for some good customers. Intel 
    has listed the faster, "66-megahertz," version, at $995 each, the 
    sources said. The Pentium contains more than twice as many transistors
    as Intel's fastest 486, which lists for $570, and will run typical
    software more than twice as fast, Intel said.
    
    Compaq said it will begin selling multiprocessor Pentium servers -
    which chain together several chips for added processing power - and
    desktop machines in mid-May.Four other variations of the Pentium chip, 
    Intel executives said earlier this year, are currently under development
    and about 200 employees are working on a next generation "P-6" chip being 
    planned as Pentium's successor.Intel's Mr. Grove said it expects to ship
    "hundreds of thousands" of Pentiums in 1993, and reach a manufacturing 
    rate of a million Pentium processors in 1994.
    

    The main players now have performance as thus:
    
                             SPECint92        SPECfp92
    
200MHz Alpha (10000-610)	116.5           193.6
182MHz Alpha (7000-610)		103.1           176.0
160MHz Alpha (4000-610) 	 94.6           137.6
150MHz Alpha (3000-500) 	 84.4           127.7
133MHz Alpha (3000-400) 	 74.8		112.5
    
66MHz Intel Pentium     	 64.5		 56.9
60MHz Intel Pentium     	 58.3		 52.2

i486DX2 66MHz              	 32.4		 16.1
i486DX  33MHz	                 18.2		  8.3
    
150MHz MIPS R4400       	 94		105
40MHz SUN SuperSPARC    	 53.2		 63.4
99MHz HP PA-RISC        	 80		150.6
62.52MHz IBM RS/6000    	 59		125
    

    
    I received some mail from INTEL. Seems I've made it to their mailing
    list. The last piece of mail was to explain to consumers their 
    iCOMP(TM) Index " Your guide for comparing Microprocessor Performance"
    
      The index is advertised as an easy to understand rating that reflects
    the relative performance of all Intels CPU's. The chart that I have
    shows the i386(TM) Sx-2032 up to a i486 DX2-66.
    
      Thus the i486 DX2-66 being the top end of their line till their
    latest announcement.
    
      Question I have is : Shouldn't we be producing a similar graph that
     shows all the competitors, and our new ALPHA chip performance.
     Seems that Intel has sent this to all its customers, but it's really
     one sided.
    
     This may not be the place for this discussion, mods let me know.
    
      

    If you are thinking that you're seeing this twice.  The table of the
    previous reply also appears in MARKETING 2146.11.

    2146 in ASIMOV::MARKETING contains the discussion of "How the Pentium
    will crush Alpha".

    re .6
    iCOMP is an Intel x86 specific benchmark.  Actually, it's a weighted
    average of the results of other benchmarks (SPEC included), but it
    also has a x86 processor dependent component (ZD's processor stuff).
    We can run iCOMP under emulation, but the results won't be flattering.
    
    I'd like to see DEC come up with a new "EyeCOMP" rating that compares
    Alpha and Intel stuff on NT, but is heavily floating point intensive
    so that our numbers look great, but then again I don't work for legal.

I've extracted a long posting from a comp..dec Usenet group that gives one
person's thoughts about Pentium vs. just about everything else including
DEC's Alpha chip. It's not clear who that person is but it's interesting
reading.

The file is available as THETOY::BOX:CHIPS.TXT. It's 82 blocks.

Intel to develop 'world's fastest supercomputer' 


(c) 1995 Copyright The News and Observer Publishing Co. (c) 1995 N.Y. Times
News Service 

SAN FRANCISCO (Sep 7, 1995 - 22:36 EDT) -- Intel Corp. said Thursday that it
had won a contract from the Department of Energy to develop what it called the
world's fastest supercomputer. 

The machine, to be built at an estimated cost of $45 million, would use 9,000
of Intel's forthcoming P6 microprocessors linked in a configuration known as
massively parallel. 

In recent years, massively parallel computers using thousands of relatively
inexpensive off-the-shelf chips have stolen the performance lomputers like
those made famous by Cray Research Inc. which use far fewer but far more
powerful processors. 

Intel said its new supercomputer would be the first to achieve the goal of
calculating more than a trillion floating point operations a second, known as a
teraflop. The machine, to be kept at querque, N.M., would be used by Department
of Energy scientists to study a variety of complex problems, foremost among
them nuclear weapons safety. 

"President Clinton is committed to ending underground nuclear testing," Victor
Reis, assistant secretary for energy programs, said in a statement. 

"Computer simulation will be a principal means for ensuring the safety,
reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. We are embarking
on a 10-year program to advance the state of high performance computing to meet
national security objectives," he said. 

For Intel the contract is more important from the standpoint of prestige than
as a rgenerator. Intel's supercomputer business, which is based in Beaverton,
Ore., accounts for only a tiny fraction of the company's overall sales, but it
contributes to the reputation that its microprocessors are suitable for all
computing tasks, large or small. 

Until now, however, Intel's supercomputers have used an entirely different line
of micrope used in personal computers. 

Intel's stock rose $2.50 Thursday, to $65, in active trading on Nasdaq,
although the rise appeared to result less from the contract than from favorable
comments by Thomas Kurlak, a Merrill Lynch analyst. He said that the likelihood
of disappointing earnings was diminishing and that fourth-quarter growth could
surge above 40 percent. 

"This contract answers one question, which is: What do you do with your
supercomputer line when it is based on the 860, a dead microprocessor?," said
Michael Slater, editor of the Microprocessor Report, an industry newsletter.
"The answer is you move 6," he said. 

The P-6, the successor to Intel's Pentium microprocessor, is scheduled to begin
production and receive its official name later this year. 

"Scalability was an important goal in designing the P6," Andrew Grove, Intel's
president and chief executive, said in a statement. "It's exciting that we can
create a system 10 times more powerful than the fastest supercomputer in the
world today using the same chips we'll be putting into desktop PCs."