On Sat, Mar 04, 2000 at 04:30:34PM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
> > > phew. a 386sx is SO slow I really can't imagine WHAT useful
> computational
> > > work it could do... Thats a 25 or so MHz CPU with a 16 bit bus that
> > > probably takes 5-6 clocks to do a simple integer operation. Oh, and its
> got
> > > no floating point. I'd estimate it at least a few 100 times slower
> than
> > > even a slow celeron at numerical work. No, wait. make that several
> > > THOUSAND times slower.
> >
> > It might be able to work on one of the distributed.net projects. I
> > don't *think* the rc5 stuff uses floating point.
>
> it doesn't.
As far as I can tell from the information available at
www.distributed.net, it does. There is quite a bit of client speed
data at http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/, including a variety of
different 386SX processors.
> However, even at 32 bit integer programming, figure the 16 bit 386SX will be
> around 4-8 times slower than a 486 at the same clock speed, which in turn is
> 3-4 times slower than a pentium at the same clock speed. now throw in the
> differential between the 16-25MHz range of the typical 386SX to the
> 400-600Mhz of a modern celeron or pentium or k6 today and we can figure
> ANOTHER 20X slower. 386SX systems didn't use any level 2 cache either, and
> only had like 8k of level 1 cache, and the 386SX memory bus took 2-3 clocks
> minimum to transfer 16 bits with no burst cycle support.
>
> All told, that 386SX will be something like 100 times slower than a bottom
> of the barrel Celeron or K6 system and probably draw at least as much power.
According to the dnet client speed page, a 386SX-33 can do about
16,000 RC5 keys/sec. My P3-450 can do about 1,264,000 kps. That's
less than 80 times faster.
Walt
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