Re: Why is SUN falling so far behind IBM?

From: Benjamin Gawert (bgawert_at_gmx.de)
Date: 08/08/04

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    Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 15:41:55 +0200

    "Arthur Corliss" <acorliss@bifrost.nevaeh-linux.org> wrote:

    > To compound these potential shortfalls, you have to rely specifically on
    > the compiler to group instructions correctly to get maximum simultaeous
    > execution. The processor has no support for internal optimisations of
    > those groups.

    Right. But the current compilers from intel are quite good at
    optimization...

    > I'm sorry, but that's a pretty convoluted setup with too much potential
    for
    > wasted bandwidth.

    Maybe. But at least our software angineers have no problem with wasted
    bandwith on Itanium. And from what I know most other ISV don't have that
    problem, too.

    > So, now reality sets in: comparing SPEC CPU 2000 for a 1.7GHz Power4 and
    > a 600MHz R14k I see that the Power4 scores a little more than twice the
    R14k
    > for almost three times the clock rate on CINT2000.

    Right. So what? Of course when comparing performance/clock cycle MIPS still
    is good. But MHz as a performance criteria is more something for the PC
    Kiddies. The CPU clock is quite irrelevant. Who cares when MIPS does more
    instructions per clock cycle when the architecture limits the achievable max
    performance way below what other modern processors do. Of course the
    performance/clock ratio is better than on the R14k-600 than on the POWER4
    1.7, but in the end the POWER4 offers much more overall performance than the
    R14k...

    > So, based on that I doubt the R16k would look worse against these
    processors.
    > Futhermore, I could compare the Power4's 680 million transistors and 50+
    watts
    > of power consumption to the R14k's 7 million transistors and 17+ watts
    draw.
    > Taken holistically, I'd say MIPS has one of the most efficient
    architectures
    > out there.

    Yes, historically. For sure it's efficient (that's btw the reason why MIPS
    is so widespread in the embedded market), but it's not fast. The
    architecture simply can't keep up with other CPUs when it comes to absolute
    performance. And we don't buy a platform because it is so good at doing lots
    of instructions per clock cycle (that's more interesting for discussions in
    comp.sys.arch), we buy it because of its absolute application performance.
    And that's where MIPS simply is behind all competition...

    > That's a whole other ball of wax, then. There's a damned good reason why
    > SGI is still in business, just like Cray and their vector processors.

    Yes, because SGI sold most of it's assets like Cray, Softimage, and also
    including parts of their round hq building in San Jose), and their
    increasing success with their Linux-based ALTIX systems. MIPS/IRIX is
    something that costs SGI more than what it brings as renevue. The few
    MIPS/IRIX sales are almost all just upgrade sales to the remaining existing
    MIPS/IRIX customers. During the last years SGI wasn't able to aquire new
    customers with MIPS/IRIX, instead of this they lost a big bunch of
    traditional customers to other system vendors which offered a better
    performance...

    MIPS/IRIX is certainly not the _reason_ they are still in business. It's
    more a fact that _despite_ MIPS/IRIX SGI is still in business...

    > In the
    > real world clock rate isn't as important as memory and disk I/O, and
    NUMAflex
    > is a damned good architecture when you need to scale to the thousands of
    > processors. And they still support twice the number of processors per SSI
    > nodes than they can on Altix/Linux.

    Yes, but on the other side the Itanium CPUs are much faster than the fastest
    MIPS offerings, so for having the same performance You need less CPUs than
    on MIPS...

    > SGI hasn't abandoned MIPS yet,

    Internal is definite that IRIX/MIPS is going to die. And You see SGI putting
    most of their ressources in Linux/ALTIX, while the MIPS series is somewhat
    stagnating for some years now. IRIX of course gets its maintenance and
    improvements, but it's very unlikely that we'll ever see a new IRIX
    version...

    > though they may have to. As good as the tech
    > is, they're a lot like DEC. Bad marketing can kill the best tecnology.

    Well, at least DEC had technology that was performing very good. That's not
    the case for SGI MIPS...

    Benjamin

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    Relevant Pages

    • Re: Why is SUN falling so far behind IBM?
      ... The CPU clock is quite irrelevant. ... bottlenecks while SGI works on resolving those instead. ... I would put forth that it's reasons like this why customers like ... > And that's where MIPS simply is behind all competition... ...
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    • Re: Why is SUN falling so far behind IBM?
      ... > something that costs SGI more than what it brings as renevue. ... > MIPS/IRIX sales are almost all just upgrade sales to the remaining existing ... > MIPS/IRIX customers. ... > most of their ressources in Linux/ALTIX, while the MIPS series is somewhat ...
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