Searching for a Solaris Workstation - revised
David G. Hough at validgh
dgh
Mon Feb 14 17:19:21 PST 1994
Obtaining and configuring Solaris Unix on a system of commodity PC components
can be surprisingly complicated. Three possible approaches include:
* Buy a collection of components, put it together, and try to get it to
work with Solaris.
* Buy an integrated Windows 3.1 system and try to get it to work with
Solaris.
* Buy an integrated Solaris system and try to get it to work.
I report my experiences with the latter two approaches, which sometimes
turn out much like the first approach. But systems from AMG and Mobius would
have booted standalone but for minor mechanical glitches. Plug and play on a
pre-existing network requires running sys-unconfig, rebooting, and answering
the same questions you'd get installing the software - but it's much faster.
I also report -g compilation time and -O execution time results for SPEC
and Perfect codes, comparing Solaris PC's to each other and to SPARCstations.
This report will be posted to USENET comp.unix.solaris in four parts.
This first part only is posted to other USENET newsgroups. Comments, sugges-
tions, and requests for copies of this report in "tbl | troff -ms" source form
are welcome to dghavalidgh.com.
SUMMARY: Conclusions reached
You can buy collections of components, and you can buy integrated tested
systems, and you do have to pay extra for the integration and test. That is
why complete integrated and tested systems may cost more than the sum of the
component prices from the same source. It is worthwhile to have an expert
spend a little time instead of you spending a lot of time, unless you want to
become an expert. If you don't want to become an expert, buy from a source
that integrates and tests the hardware and software that you plan to use.
A diskless refurbished SPARCstation ELC provides the best -O execution
performance/price for CPU-bound scientific computation among the alternatives
considered in this report, taking no account of the cost of its server.
A commodity PC running SLS Linux 1.04 provides the best -g compilation
performance/price among the alternatives considered in this report. However
the SLS 1.04 Linux distribution is not yet an industrial-strength operating
system, although some parts of it such as GCC and F2C work well.
A refurbished SS2 with Weitek PowerUp provides the best combination of -O
execution and -g compilation. Measured PowerUp CPU performance is mostly in
line with Weitek claims. But wait until the PowerUp timing glitch bug is
fixed.
The Mobius Protege 66 provides the best performance/price for CPU-bound
scientific computation among the Solaris PC alternatives considered in this
report.
66DX2 PC's are better than 50DX PC's for the kinds of problems considered
in this report, but not as much better as one might suppose.
If you purchase a PC with MSDOS or Windows, instead of one with Solaris
installed and working, in order to run Solaris you'll probably have to replace
the SCSI and graphics controllers, and perhaps the ethernet, sound card, and
CDROM too, if those are bundled. So take that into consideration when compar-
ing prices.
Apple Macintosh Quadra 800's running AUX 3.0.2 are not competitive, on
performance or performance/price, with PC's or SPARCstations for CPU-bound
scientific computation. Perhaps the Unix derivative for Macintosh PowerPC's
will do better.
Fast SCSI disks on a slow shared network can be faster than unshared lo-
cal ordinary SCSI disks.
Performance anomalies abound in networked multi-user systems. Even when
the network is quiet and only one user is active.
SUMMARY: Floating-point performance and performance/price
The following prices are for the price comparison configurations
described later, while the following performance figures are for the perfor-
mance comparison configurations described later, which are generally similar
but not identical to the corresponding price comparison configurations. The
performance figures measure -O execution and -g compilation, floating-point
performance primarily, integer performance secondarily, "local" disk and "re-
mote" net I/O performance to a minor extent, and graphics not at all. Graphics
performance varies considerably among these systems, which should be taken
into account when comparing price and performance/price: thus Mobius PC
performance/price figures benefit from less expensive graphics and SCSI con-
trollers than the ATI Graphics Ultra Pro 2MB and Adaptec 1742 installed on the
AMG and Gateway PC's.
-O -O exec -g comp
Price -O ~fp92 median %/ median %/
$K System ~fp92 /$K perf % $K perf % $K
REMOTE disks
4.0 RFB ELC 14 3.5 24 6.0 29 7.3
5.4 Mobius 66DX2 13 2.4 21 3.9 33 6.1
5.6 RFB SS2 16 2.9 31 5.5 45 8.0
5.8 Quadra 800 5.9 1.0 9 1.6 29 5.0
6.4 AMG 50DX 11 1.7 18 2.8 36 5.6
6.8 Gateway Linux 9.9 1.5 16 2.4 57 8.4
7.0 RFB SS2+PowerUp 24 3.4 42 6.0 57 8.1
7.4 Gateway 66DX2 13 1.8 22 3.0 38 5.1
7.6 SPARCclassic 15 2.0 28 3.7 45 5.9
LOCAL disks
5.4 Mobius 66DX2 13 2.4 21 3.9 38 7.0
5.6 RFB SS2 15 2.7 30 5.4 46 8.2
5.8 Quadra 800 5.9 1.0 9 1.6 29 5.0
6.4 AMG 50DX 11 1.7 19 3.0 40 6.2
7.0 RFB SS2+PowerUp 24 3.4 42 6.0 58 8.3
7.4 Gateway 66DX2 13 1.8 23 3.1 45 6.1
7.6 SPARCclassic 15 2.0 28 3.7 47 6.2
19.7 10/41 4.1.3+2.0.1 38 1.9 76 3.9 98 5.0
19.7 10/41 2.3+2.0.1 43 2.2 79 4.0 77 3.9
19.7 10/41 2.3+3.0 42 2.1 76 3.9 90 4.6
CONTENTS
I. Overview
ABSTRACT with conclusions
SUMMARY: Conclusions reached
SUMMARY: Floating-point performance and performance/price
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Unix PC information sources
Future directions
My business card
II. Configuration and Price
METHODS for obtaining Solaris PC's
REQUIREMENTS for Solaris PC's
SPECIFICATIONS for PC price quotes
PRICE QUOTES - MSDOS/Windows PC systems
WARNINGS to consider with PC price quotations
PRICE QUOTES - Solaris PC system
PRICE comparison configurations
III. Installation
AMG Solaristation
Gateway 4DX2-66E
Mobius Protege
SLS Linux 1.04
Apple Quadra 800
Weitek PowerUp
Current Compatibility Information: Solaris for x86
IV. Performance
PERFORMANCE comparison configurations
Performance Comparisons - SPEC Ratios
Performance tests
Performance Comparisons - Against SPARCstation 10/41
Performance Comparisons - Head-to-Head
INTRODUCTION
Sun has always claimed that its workstations were competitively priced in
comparison to comparable PC's. This was a gedanken-claim until Sun announced
that its new operating system, Solaris 2, would be ported to PC's with ade-
quate power. That raised the interesting possibility that if commodity-priced
PC's were able to run workstation software, then the advantages of RISC Unix
workstations would disappear over time, due to the usual economy of scale
volume arguments. So I decided to determine for myself how much a PC-based
workstation cost and how well it performed, at least in comparison to the
SPARCstations with which I was familiar, both to satisfy my own curiosity and
to provide grist for a report to stimulate my consulting business.
My perspective is that of a technical SPARCstation end user considering
relative economics of PC's. After all, PC's running a Unix derivative can
run a windows emulator like Wabi very effectively in order to obtain the bene-
fit of mass market applications that are much cheaper than their Unix analogs,
if available at all. Furthermore, as an independent end user working, in
principle, in a network of cooperating peers, I appreciate certain centralized
services like such as NIS, but I expect each end user to do his own hardware
and software administration, as I did; some of my experiences are described
below. This report does not consider such interesting and time-consuming re-
lated issues as installing local printing, configuring sendmail, and uucp.
I registered for the Solaris developers conference in March 1993, which
included a copy of Solaris for x86 and a C compiler, and a discount on a
SPARCclassic, which is intended to compete with PC's. So I had software, a
cheap SPARCstation for comparison, and a Sun SCSI CD drive from another
SPARCstation, so all I needed was a suitable PC. The separate sections of
this document report my investigations of
II) PC configuration and pricing
III) PC installation
IV) PC and SPARCstation performance
Unix PC Information Sources
Eric Raymond (esrasnark.thyrsus.com) used to post a "PC-Clone UNIX
{Hard,Soft}ware Buyer's Guide" to news.answers from time to time. Although
it hasn't been updated recently, it still contains much useful information for
the novice.
If you have been living in the sheltered worlds of workstations or
supercomputers, browse through a copy of Computer Shopper to see what
commodity-pricing-based open systems is all about.
The February 1994 issue of Advanced Systems (formerly SunWorld) has an
interesting article comparing an IBM PowerPC system running AIX and a Mobius
Pentium system running Solaris.
If you decide not to buy a system with Solaris pre-installed and tested,
you'd better buy the Solaris for x86 software before you buy any hardware and
read everything in the documentation about hardware compatibility. Sun's
current list of Solaris-compatible PC hardware may be obtained by sending any
email to x86-hwconfigacypress.west.sun.com. Solaris system configuration
information is said to be available by calling 310-348-6070.
An invaluable reference for anybody moving Sun hardware around is the
Field Engineers Handbook, available from Sun Express for $500.
Future directions
With suitable funding this study could be extended in the directions of
Other CPUs
Pentium and DX3, AMD, Cyrix, IBM x86's; Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC
RISCs.
Other Configurations
ELC as 4.1.3 client or with 4.1.3 local disk; as 5.3 local disk or as lo-
cal disk configured for cachefs.
Other Unix
The test harness requires very solid and standard sh, make, cc, and f77,
as well as adequate implementations of many other standard Unix utili-
ties, SCCS, and NFS.
Other compilers
It would be interesting to test the same version of GCC and F2C uniformly
on all these platforms.
Other languages
Extension of the test harness to encompass C++, Fortran-90, and Modula-3
would require existence of a substantial body of freely-distributable,
portable source codes for realistic scientific applications.
Windows
Windows NT and Windows 4.0 may be inherently potent enough to support the
test harness, but to be usable they will require something like the MKS
Unix utilities for MSDOS, along with NFS and X support. MKS
(inquiryamks.com) has announced Unix utilities available for NT as well
as OS/2, while Sun has announced that an NT-NFS product is under develop-
ment. Consensys, Hippix, and DataFocus are also supposed to be develop-
ing products in this vein. I haven't investigated yet the POSIX layer on
Windows NT, but I've heard it described as minimal - perhaps a checkoff
item like AUX - but not as well integrated with the underlying operating
system as AUX.
Other reports
Other reports available in "tbl | troff -ms" form:
SPARCstation 10/30 and 10/41 Relative Performance 93/01/29
SPARCstation Compiler Comparison Report 92/10/25
Suggestions for SPEC 3.0 91/06/27
My business card
Your system or your competitor's can be the subject of this kind of
study. If interested, send for my detailed business announcement.
David G. Hough - validgh
system correctness evaluation
system performance evaluation
SPARC and Solaris compatibility evaluation
IEEE 754 floating-point
dghavalidgh.com
PO Box 20370 voice (408) 997-7763
San Jose, CA 95160 fax (408) 997-7764
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