AIX on 3090

[David Boyes]

In article <6403 at turnkey.gryphon.COM> jackv at turnkey.gryphon.COM writes:
>In article <289 at dgsi.UUCP> brian at dgsi.UUCP (Brian Kelley/10000000) writes:
>[ my opinions on 3090 being a fast unix platform deleted...]

>>[Jack compares AIX/370 to about double a decstation 3100]

>I don't know what the source of this opinion was or how the comparison was
>made. I suspect there are some isolated tests or activities that might
>produce something like this but I also think it would be misleading. One
>needs to evaluate performance in a more system-oriented way than how many
>dhrystones the cpu can crank, at least that's my opinion. Anyone familiar
>with 370 systems knows that where they shine is batch I/O processing power.
>I doubt that the Dec Station could match 32 or more channels pumping 5Meg/sec
>to and from DASD.

Absolutely. One of the lingering problems with implementing
high-performance Unix machines for business applications is their
immensely poor disk performance for database-style applications
that commonly do block transfers of records from DASD to main
storage. IBM can claim transaction rates of over 200/sec (using
MVS/CICS) because of the large quantity of hardware support for
that type of application. How well AIX/370 can map the
traditional Unix character-based I/O system to the IBM
architecture remains to be seen, but if it works out at all, you
can expect to see Unix finally make a real dent in the business
arena, and not just because corporations are having trouble
finding programmers with MVS experience.

(As a side note, consider IBM's latest DASD announcement. 22.6
gigabyes in a roughly 7 foot square box? That kind of disk
storage makes large multiuser Unix systems an interesting
possibility again.)

>10's of Megabytes, the 3090 can have 512 Meg (It is fairly common for systems
>to have 256).

Not all that common -- 64M is more common, due to the high cost
of memory -- but 256M is not unreasonable.

>You can therefore
>run processes on these beasts that you could never even dream of on your
>workstation. 

As I understand it, AIX runs under VM/XA. This gives you 990M
virtual machines, as well as the ability to support multiple AIX
systems on the same iron at the same time, each with the full
resources of the machine. 

>> I've also heard that IBM will not let anyone disclose performance
>>figures for the system.  How about some dhrystones?  Seriously, are there
>>industry standard benchmark results available from somewhere?

>IBM marketing will, as far as I know, be releasing performance data for
>AIX/370 when the product becomes generally available. I think its normal
>procedure for a customer given an early release of a product to be under
>non-disclosure on things like performance due to the very fact that it is
>pre-released code, so there is nothing unusual about this.

In most cases, you're not even allowed to ackowledge the
*existence* of the product, let alone performance data on it.
Anything you read in the trade rags at this point is probably
pure speculation until the product hits General Availability.
Time will tell. IBM doesn't until they're ready.

>> How much
>>does a typical 3090-600 cost? 

A lot. A reasonably configured 3090/600S (with enough DASD, tape drives and
memory to be useful) will probably go for more than $5-6 million.
That doesn't count air conditioning, chilled water supply, or
software licensing. Still, I agree with the Locus folks; if you
need that kind of compute power, it's probably a competitive
alternative to a small Cray, and you can still run other IBM
stuff on it...8-)

>Jack F. Vogel			jackv at seas.ucla.edu



-- 
David Boyes      "... no love was left; All Earth was but one thought - and
dboyes at rice.edu   that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang of
                  of famine fed upon all entrails - men Died and their bones
                  were tombless as their flesh ..."  - Lord Byron