EMP Code Performance Comparisons for IBM RS 6000 Workstations, Models 320 and 530.

摘要

Executing electromagnetic pulse (EMP) codes on personal computers and workstations, in addition to mainframe supercomputers, has been a goal of research in recent years. Until now, personal computers and workstations have offered insufficient resources to make this goal reachable. We present some results of limited comparisons made between IBM RISC System 6000 model 320 and 530 workstations, several 80286 and 80386 personal computers, and IBM 3090 and Cray X-MP mainframe supercomputers. We emphasized floating-point speed in execution of several small, medium, and large Fortran-based computer codes, including a number of IMP codes. We show some additional results for the Dhrystone benchmark. The comparisons clearly place the RS 6000 workstations close to the mainframe systems tested in speed and memory capacity. The RS 6000/530 system ran the Dhrystone benchmark three times faster than the Cray X-MP, and ran small scalar Fortran benchmarks as fast as the Cry X-MP. Some large codes, which were able to restrict frequent data reference to the RS 6000 high-speed memory cache, ran about two times faster than other large codes. Cache-efficient medium-sized codes ran faster than other medium-sized codes, but not as much as a factor of two. The 'xlf' Fortran compiler for the RS 6000 performed very well on severe tests of reliability and code optimization. We conclude that the RS 6000 models tested can run mainframe-class EMP codes close to the user and his interactive graphical interface.