| Regarding CPUs and operating systems for Csound:
I have been using a 486 100MHz for a while now and soon hope to have
a Pentium Pro 150 MHz, running both Linux and Win95 (and MSDOS if I
want).
Those with $ should definitely check out Alpha motherboards, which
can run Linux. I suspect it is early days, but presumably they work
and can run GCC.
A friend in the US (a compiler guru who once sold a C compiler he
wrote to Bell Labs) has a 433 MHz Alpha from:
http://www.dcginc.com/alpha.htm
He says, in an understated way, that it is "very fast".
This company is basically integrating DEC motherboards into complete
systems. You should be able to buy the motherboards themselves from
DEC directly.
Alpha information is available from:
http://www.digital.com/semiconductor/dsc-21164.html
It seems there was an early Alpha chip called a 21064, but modern
Alphas are 21164xy, where xx could be a variety of things. The list
at the end of the above page gives details. Those with x=P are
evidently optimised (?) for NT whereas others are for Unix.
Not on this list is the new 21164PC chip which DEC has just announced
as a low cost NT CPU, making the chip with Mitsubishi and Samsung.
There is lots of full-on technical info, including on the 21164PC
chip and on new DEC ATX form-factor motherboards at:
http://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/info/semiconductor/literature/
dsc-library.html#alpha
Apart from the CPU doco, files of particular interest in this
directory are:
164lxmpb.pdf
A very new (27 March) motherboard for the IB, P8 and MB CPUs -
466, 533 and 600 MHz respectively. Uses a new 21174 core
logic chip.
pc164mpb.pdf
May be new documentation or a new version of the motherboard
used by DCG. It too has the 21172 core logic chip. 366 to
500 MHz.
The Alpha 21164PC seems to be a cheaper CPU, specially targetted to
x86 emulation. For the same clock speed, it seems to be slower than
the other 21164s. For instance:
http://www.digital.com/semiconductor/alphapc64.htm
says that at 400 MHz it would have a SPECfp95 rating of 10.7, but
this would be under ideal conditions. Since DEC claims 27 for a
600 MHz 21164, but extrapolating real benchmarks from 500 MHz gives
24.5, then maybe 10.0 would be closer to the actual result in a
system. The 21164PC is not ready yet, and there are no motherboards
for it (the package is quite different). Clock speeds are to be 400,
466 and 533 MHz. They are being made for the NT market, with samples
in June. I would expect these chips and their systems to be
relatively cheap compared to the other Alphas. It chews 27 watts at
400 MHz, which is non-trivial. At 2.5 volts, the damn thing has an
impedance of a quarter of an ohm.
Some interesting floating point benchmarks are at:
http://www.specbench.org/osg/cpu95/
In particular, check:
http://www.specbench.org/cgi-bin/osgresults?conf=cpu95;op=form
(Set the "Processor" option to Display, set the primary sorting key
to "Processor" and to save space, set the display of "Company"
to "Skip". Set the Duplicates option to "Display only the latest
or highest results".)
This gives a list of benchmark results and links to details.
To transform this thing into a horse-race, do the following to make
it sort on result, and ignore multi-CPU systems:
Make it Skip printing the #CPU, but set the #CPU equals to 1.
Then make the primary search key "Result".
Some notable results:
Estrella MT604-133 133MHz PowerPC 604 3.70
Dell XPS Model 's', 166MHz, Pentium 3.84
Dell XPS Model 's', 200MHz, Pentium 4.18
Dell XPS Model 's', 166MHz, Pentium MMX 4.30
Dell XPS Model 's', 200MHz, Pentium MMX 4.66
Alder System (150MHz) 150MHz Pentium Pro 5.42
Alder System (200MHz, 256KB L2) 200MHz PPro 6.75
PRIMERGY-560 200 MHz Pentium-Pro [512k L2 cache?] 7.16
MVME2604-2161 200 MHz PowerPC 604e 8.92
Sun Ultra 1 Creator Model 200E 200Mhz UltraSPARC 10.4
Indy-2 Impact 10000 195MHz, 1MB L2 R10000 2.4 10.6
HP 9000 Model K460EG 180 MHz PA-RISC 8000 20.2
AlphaStation 500/500 500 MHz 21164 20.4
How do these HP9000s work so fast with such a low clock speed?
The Alpha CPU is clearly a savage device. The 600 MHz one dissipates
45 watts, which raises some extreme cooling problems.
If someone can email me a Csound piece which cooks in a known time on
a Pentium 166 (or similar) then I can report how it goes on the PPro
150 under Linux - in about two weeks time.
I would have said that MMX is of absolutely no interest to
Csounders. It is integer operations only - and usually several
operands in parallel. However, the benchmarks above indicate that
the chips with MMX do actually perform floating point faster - even
though these benchmarks will not touch the MMX instructions.
Other potentially interesting sites:
List of PC motherboard manufacturers:
http://www.randomc.com/~dperr/mb_mfgs.htm
Microway is a long established (1982) manufacturer of hot hardware
and software:
http://www.microway.com/mbpx.html
Explanation of how the "Unix" Alpha chips are identical to the "NT"
ones, except that only the "Unix" chips will run DEC Unix, and that
the "Unix" chips are more expensive. Linux runs on either type.
Microway provides a supported Linux for US$195.
http://www.microway.com/mbpx.html
Starting point at Intel to look at various Pentiums and other CPU
types.
http://www.intel.com/design/product.htm
Pricing details of Alpha 21164PC 533MHz version: US$495.
http://www.digital.com/info/rcfoc/970324.htm#CPU_Update_It_is
Floating point benchmarks for Pentiums and Pentium Pros - with
concise explanation of what the benchmarks mean.
http://www.intel.com/procs/perf/highend/spec95.htm
Red Hat mailing list regarding Alpha Linux:
http://www.redhat.com/support/mailing-lists/archives/axp-list/
gcc-2.7.2.1-2 GNU C Compiler in Red Hat's Alpha Linux:
http://www.redhat.com/linux-info/pkglist/rh4.1_alpha/Development/Languges/
- Robin
. Robin Whittle .
. http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au .
. 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia .
. Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 .
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