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List:       freebsd-alpha
Subject:    Re: alpha ev56 contra ev67
From:       Bjarne Blichfeldt <bbl () dk ! damgaard ! com>
Date:       2000-09-20 10:10:53
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Thanks for your answers.

Yes I did read the alpha manual before mailing, but I 
obviously didn't got any wiser, I am not into heavy cpu-ing ;-)

Our current development platform is a ev56 and we produce code
for that by default, but we also produce code for ev4 for 
customers with older machines. The software is accounting software,
and is mostly i/o, not processor heavy in any way.

Now, one customer has upgraded his machine to a ev67 and is not
impressed by the performance increase they have seen. They therefore
request (thru Compaq) that we upgrade our machine, or borrow one from
Compaq so we can compile our software on a ev67.

Now there are about a zillion things to look into here, which has nothing
to do with the chips and I dont seriously believe that this customer's
lack of expectation has much to do whith the chips, but...

The ev5 had new instructions compared to ev4. That might had improved 
performance, but only a recompile on a ev5 would have taken advantage
of that. I could not find any instructions new to ev6, but understood
there might be other issues, hence the question on the list.

So while the case with this customer is probably not a processor
problem, it triggered the thought process on wether or not it is time
for us to upgrade our hardware. The downside of a newer processor is that 
we then have to produce both ev4 and ev56 in addition to the new default 
ev67 code. At least, that was the reasoning.

Since there are no new instructions, we would be able to produce only
ev4 and ev67 code, and then use ev67 code on a ev56 with no ill effect.

So thanks again for your inputs.

Regards,
Bjarne Blichfeldt




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