You're making the same mistake everyone does -- comparing apples to wildebeests. Mips are not mips. We go through this every few months, so here it is again:
S390 machines are VERY good at handling I/O but are relatively slow in compute power. Intel machines are fast at raw compute power but are very slow in I/O handling. Intel has to do ALL the computing and I/O with its central processor, and probably spends 90% of its time handling I/O. You're comparing the total processing power of an intel box against the central processor only of a mainframe. a 350 mips z800 (we have one) is just the central processor. By the time you add in the processing capability of the channel processors and the processors inside the control units, you might raise that 350 mips to around 30,000 mips -- but only for I/O intensive jobs! If your application is compute intensive (beowulf clusters,engineering calculations, lots of Java), use Intel or HP. If it's I/O intensive (databases, network infrastructure, web processing) the s390 will beat it hands down from Sunday. You also need to consider the cost-per-computing power ratio. My personal pet peeve in our company is when someone sets up a database on a "fast" distributed machine running Unix or Windows, then finds out the "fast" machine can't handle the load, so they bring in another processor to "mirror" the data to allow more people to access it simultaneously. Any time you have 20 copies of the same data being updated, AT LEAST 19 of them will be wrong! Why not put it on a machine that can handle the load in the first place? "Caesar si viveret, ad remam dareris" - Henry Beard Gordon Wolfe, Ph.D. Boeing Enterprise Servers (425) 865-5940 > ---------- > From: Ranga Nathan > Reply To: Linux on 390 Port > Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 11:54 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Linux Benchmark > > I find my Linux LPAR very very slow, even though it has 5% of a 350mips > z/800. > It is running SLES8. When I start the perl debug session, I can go have a > cup of coffee before it prompts. On an ordinary intel box it is almost > instantaneous! > > 5% of 350mips = 17.5mips or is it not relevant here? > > Wonder what others are experiencing. > > > > > "Post, Mark K" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent by: Linux on 390 Port <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 05/21/2004 11:14 AM > Please respond to Linux on 390 Port > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > cc: > Subject: Re: Linux Benchmark > > > Nothing that would be meaningful in any way, no. > > > Mark Post > > -----Original Message----- > From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Ranga > Nathan > Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 2:10 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Linux Benchmark > > > I would like to compare my Linux LPAR against a Lintel (Linux on Intel). > Is > there some kind of benchmarking available? > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send > email > to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or > visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
