Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:49:48 11/13/97
Go up one level in this thread
On November 13, 1997 at 12:19:31, Chris Carson wrote: >see article: http://www.currents.net/newstoday/97/11/11/news5.html > >Interesting article. Lots of power 400 to 700 MHZ, >Lots of RAM (up to 3 gigabytes). >128 bit cache (up to 4 megabytes L3) >64 bit power >Native Windows NT 5.0, no translation needed. > >I hope this puts pressure on Intel!! :) > >Looks like 1998 might bring some competition. > >Best Regards, >Chris Carson I've been impressed with the alpha's since day one. *however*, there is one confusing issue I don't have an explanation for yet. B.T. Fraise had a 533mhz alpha running on ICC. He was getting around 150K nodes per second with Crafty, which he runs there as "Data". Jason used a plain vanilla DEC alpha/500mhz in Paris, and we were getting around 250K nodes per second. He compared that machine to a P6/200 using the same OS (NT) and was getting around 80K. So the /500 gave us 250/80 speedup which is a factor of 3.1 Data went from 80K to 150K, which was less than 2.0 speedup. Even worse, on his alpha, we saw *dramatic* speed variations, from 40K to 150K, running the *same* test position multiple times. It seems that there is some cache condition that can be badly broken, or *something*. Because we did not see this wild fluctuation on the Digital machines. main point of all this is that a cheap alpha might be a "cheap alpha". We need some data to compare all of these machines, and find out why some are dogs and others are vipers. BTW, there are *new* products coming from DEC. Stay tuned for some 1ghz and up announcements before long. That will be exciting... I've heard lots of rumors from former students that work up there, indicating that their 1ghz machine will be significantly more than 2x faster than their /500 21164. Crafty's already drooling. :) damned near shorting out my P6 motherboard in fact. :)
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.