Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:13:25 02/06/99
Go up one level in this thread
On February 06, 1999 at 14:04:32, Don Dailey wrote: >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 Here's my test results. For Paris, running on NT on a pentium pro 200mhz machine, we did 80K for our 6 minute benchmark run. Jason fiddled around for a few days compiling for an alpha, and on the 500mhz 21164 we used in paris, the same test produces 250K nodes per second, a factor of 3.1 times faster, for a clock speed of 2.5X faster. Which is actually pretty close, mhz for mhz, with intel. But the 21264 is about 2x faster than the 21164 at the same clock speed, based on numbers I have received... (running Crafty) which means it blows the PII's away badly, and even the upcoming 500mhz PIII's) although I wouldn't mind having 4 slot-2 PIII/500's when they are shipped. I am saving money for them for my quad, for sure. :)
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