Kent Covert ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
: In article <1994Nov16.145923.34092@miavx1>, [log in to unmask]
(Aaron Porter) writes:
: >     Eeek.  No wonder it sometimes lags.  At least the memory is of
: > the right magnatude, but 190 Mhz isn't really all that fast nowadays.  I
: > shudder to think what it was like before!
 
: Be cautious with this information.  Mhz are probably the WORST comparison
: of processor speed.  You cannot use Mhz to compare the Alpha chip to a
: Intel X86 chip.  Even in the Intel chips, you can't use Mhz to compare
: speeds.  For example, a 33 Mhz 486 is a lot faster than a 33 Mhz 386 due to
: the internal structure of the chip.
 
: In relation to the Alpha chips, the chip is a RISC based processor.  The
: chip has 190 Million cycles/second, but it can execute up to 4 instructions
: simultaneously in each of those cycles!  It's a 64-bit processor compared
: to a 32-bit X86 chip (which goes into 16-bit mode when using a "real"-mode
: application (I think)).  In addition, the chip has built-in pipelining - a
: feature that used to be available only with vector processors.
 
        I was just kinda dissapointed.  This machine, at many other
schools of equal or lesser size to miami would be a workstation, not a
student server.
 
--
 
 
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