[SunRescue] Ultra 1 vs. beefy Sparc 20

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Michael C. Vergallen wrote:

> Nope ..you seem to be confused here...The sparc 5 is quite a nice
> machine...However depending on what you want to spend you may want to look
> into the Ultra 5 machines sun offers.

The SS5 is nice, but microsparc was the economy line of CPU's at the time
and is a relatively poor performer per MHz.  The plus that the SS5 has is
that cache misses cost nearly nothing so cache-busting apps perform well.
SS10/SS20 systems have a much steeper performance drop once you venture
out of cache.

Bottom line is that the SS5 doesn't really need a big cache with the
memory architecture that it has.  The CPU just isn't fast enough to outrun
the memory bus by very much.  This is why a 512K cache had to be designed
into the 160/170MHz TurboSparc upgrades and systems.

-James