[rescue] Spark10 CPU question

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: john ferguson <jferg977 at aol.com>
" 
" 
" I'm running an old (but great)  CAD program on an SS10 using SunOS 
" 4.1.4.  I also have a SPARCPrinter 1, which also works and have compiled 
" a 2006+/- flavor of Ghostscript to accept more modern versions of 
" PostScript output and print them.  And, no, I didn't really know what I 
" 
" []
" 
" to the question:
" 
" My memory is that there is no benefit for multiple processors in 4.1.4, 
" and it seems unlike the application I use the most would benefit either.

there is, for heavy cpu-pig apps like cad, even if they're
single-threaded and under sunos4's primitive 'multiproc' - the app can
substantially hog only one cpu, but that leaves the other free to do
everything else a running system wants.

i saw this at a network-gear shop in the mid '90s; workstations with
only one proc were virtually unusable while doing sims, but ones with
dual procs were only a little slowed in the logic editor by the
'background' task.  sims went faster too, since they were swapped less
with their 'own' cpu.

" Second question, is if you had this system, which CPU would you use?  
" Stability would be nice and higher performance than the base TI twin CPU 
" I have now would be the goal.

supers don't clock as fast as hypers, but they do much more per tick.
top-end hypers still rule, iirc.

" I'm assuming that I'll buy the recommended board on-line.  and maybe a 
" peppier frame-buffer.

it's really a shame the onboard isn't supported under sunos4.  i
suppose an alert kernel programmer could massage driver code from *bsd
into a lkm, if any of them support it...
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought