Looking at the performance of microprocessors in currently available systems, Andrew Allison notes in the latest issue of his Inside The New Computer Industry that Ross Technology Inc’s HyperSparc II is not only the best of breed Sparc… but is also neck-and-neck with the Precision Architecture 7100LC for second place overall, behind Alpha 21064. PowerPC does not even figure on Allison’s first quarter 1995 relative performance table, which uses the 100MHz Pentium’s integer performance as a mean; Alpha 21064 leads HyperSparc II, PA7100LC, R4400, SuperSparc II, Power2+, Pentium, R8000 and R4600 in that order. The poor showing by Power and PowerPC should be of concern to PowerPC fan club, he says, it’s also noteworthy that the R4600, the processor currently used in most of Silicon Graphics Inc’s Indy products, is outperformed by Pentium. Digital Equipment Corp, meanwhile, clearly has the edge in the performance-sensitive segment. If the company can ever get its story across, it has the o pportunity to repeat the Hewlett-Packard Snakes story. A look at Allison’s first quarter 1996 table for performance based on production systems due by then – with P6 integer performance the mean – sees Alpha 21164 ahead of Precision Architecture 8000, then PowerPC 620, R10000, UltraSparc and PowerPC 604. Based on tape-out, UltraSparc has a five month lead over the three other new processors and is about nine months behind 21164, Allison estimates. By first quarter 1996, DEC and Hewlett-Packard boxes will offer twice the per-processor integer and three time the floating-point performance of the best iAPX-86 boxes. PowerPC, UltraSparc and perhaps MIPS-based systems, will offer roughly 50% better integer and twice the floating-point performance. The 64,000 dollar question is whether that is good enough to prevent iAPX-86 AT systems from decimating the workstation and server markets. Only if there are clear price-performance as well as performance advantages, Allison says. The next big issue, he acknowledges, is funding the development of processors that will compete with Hewlett-Packard and Intel, and the pressure that they will bring to jump architectures.
