Author: Don Dailey
Date: 11:04:32 02/06/99
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On February 05, 1999 at 17:53:57, Eugene Nalimov wrote: >On February 05, 1999 at 15:50:20, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On February 05, 1999 at 14:52:07, Don Dailey wrote: >>[snip] >>>There are some companies selling these machines at reasonable >>>prices, better than you might think. They can run Windows NT and >>>Linux. Crafty would really scream on this machine. I don't know >>>if Bob has an Alpha NT port or not, but there is a good chance a >>>recompile of Crafty will do the trick. >>There is an ALPHA NT version at my website. It is a single CPU compile, but it >>is just a #define away from being an SMP version. If anybody wants me to build >>an SMP version for the Alpha chip, let me know. We have an Alpha machine being >>used in C.A.P. right now. If I did a port for our big ALPHA unix machine, we >>might really see some performance. The Alpha NT machine we have is a pipsqueak >>(old and not a very high MHz chip). >> >>>The big problem is how many >>>programs will run on an NT Alpha machine? This I don't really know. >>>But theoretically, it should be easy to port most NT software. >>It they are in C, it should not take much. Especially if they are simply >>Winboard engines. All you have to do is recompile it. It is almost always the >>GUI stuff that is system specific. And if they already work on Windows 95 or >>Windows NT, the port is trivial. >> >>>Programs like Fritz, which are developed with assemblers won't >>>port without a huge effort so don't expect to see them. It's >>>the classic tradeoff, if you want the most compatibility and >>>comfort, you have to accept more performance constraints. You >>>also have to face your fears, superior products usually die >>>eventually because the lesser (usually lesser because it is OLDER) >>>product is the one that has the most intertia and the most hype. >>I would *really* love to try an EV6 machine with 8 cpu's running NT to see what >>it could do. While the Alpha machine has native 64 bit integers for the >>compiler, the OS is still 32 bit. I think a 64 bit port of NT will also be very >>helpful. Tablebase and opening book I/O would be improved, for instance. > >Here I have Dell dual PII/400 and Digital dual Alpha 21164A/500. >Based on my experience, those machines have almost identical >performance - even on Crafty, which does a lot of 64-bit operations, >Alpha is only marginally faster. My feelings are confirmed by >SpecInt95. > >I know that 21164A is slower than 21264, but Pentium/400 is not >the last processor from Intel, too. > >The real Alpha advantage lays in 64-bit pointers - it's ideal for >huge databases. But not for chess, and not with 32-bit NT. > >Eugene I don't get this at all. My program runs way faster on an Alpha, even adjusted for megahertz. You cannot be doing this test right. Are you comparing native code applications? - Don
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