[rescue] SS10/SM51 not as lame as you think...

[Patrick Giagnocavo +1.717.201.3366]

A customer of mine is getting a custom app that pulls reporting info
from Postgres and then runs it through lout to generate PS, then
through ps2pdf to generate a PDF file.

So I decided to run some real-world tests: x86 vs. Sparc SM51.

x86: OpenBSD 3.0, AMD K6-2 450Mhz, 100MHZ PC100 RAM
SPARC: OpenBSD 3.1, SM51 (50Mhz w 1MB cache), SS10 70 or 60ns RAM
(there is not much difference between the 2 revs of the OSes)

So, the CPU differences in terms of MHz are 9x - 450 vs. 50; the SM51
does however have a little more cache (I think the x86 has 256K).

x86 (first run, then second run of report text to PS file):
time lout -I./ sample-report.pdf > s.ps
    0.91s real     0.33s user     0.24s system
    0.52s real     0.37s user     0.14s system

SPARC (as above):
    1.61s real     1.36s user     0.21s system
    1.60s real     1.34s user     0.23s system

Speed difference: up to 3x slower


Now we convert the PS to PDF:
x86:
time ps2pdf s.ps s.pdf
    1.48s real     0.68s user     0.17s system
    0.76s real     0.63s user     0.12s system

SPARC:
    2.75s real     1.84s user     0.35s system
    2.18s real     1.85s user     0.30s system

Speed difference:  again, about 3x

I was somewhat impressed, in that the SM51 appears to operate at a
level somewhere around that of a P150 to PPro180 proc.

I did a torture test when I was bringing up the box, doing 3 or 4
compiles of different packages at the same time, then logging in to
beat on it interactively.  

I was impressed at how interactivity did not suffer too much in spite
of the disk being constantly thrashed and CPU idle %age at 0 .

Once I get the big reports running through the system I will run the
tests again and post them back to the list, if there is interest...

Dave, chime in here when you want :-)

Cordially
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