[SunRescue] SS2 usefulness (waz: 5 major manufacturers?)

[KurtMosiejczukkurt at csh.rit.edu]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> Shel is right, it's just you.  The only thing that SS2's can't do worth shit
> is encryption.  I've noticed that ssh'ing into my SS2 takes 2-5 times as
> long as ssh'ing into my 486-50.  It's not ram nor net connection, as the SS2
> has 64MB of ram, and the 486 has 16MB, and they're plugged into exactly the
> same ports on my network.
> 	Greg

I'm making the assumption that ssh uses encryption similar in nature to
RC5 et al.  The reason why sparcs tend to be MUCH slower than x86 machines
for these algorithms is because the x86 line has hardware bit rotate 
operations that the sparcs don't.  So, people who "benchmark" with things
like distributed.net are picking an obscure weak area.  It's on one
of the dsitributed.net FAQs.

--Kurt