[Info-vax] VMS x86 performance ?

[Craig A. Berry]

On 10/30/20 8:24 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2020-10-30, geze... at rlgsc.com <gezelter at rlgsc.com> wrote:

>> Working with preliminary cross compilers?  Early field test software?
>>
> 
> The compilers are only one part of this.
> 
> Ian is very, very correct. We should be getting some initial indications
> by now, especially for I/O bound workloads, where the compilers are far
> less important.
> 
> For example, tests from RMS could compare Alpha/Itanium performance
> with x86-64 (and associated I/O hardware) performance.

Which would be meaningless because RMS is software that is getting
compiled with non-optimized cross compilers, and other parts of the I/O
path are also compiled software. Disk I/O and network I/O have
traditionally been much slower on VMS than on other OSs running on the
same hardware, especially with default settings, so the difference
pretty much has to be in software, which is currently getting compiled
with rough-and-ready cross compilers.  Your impatience has no impact on
how the technology actually works.

> We are _6_ _years_ into the port! How much longer are people going to
> have to wait ?

At least until v9.1, but don't get your hopes up even then.  v9.1 is
scheduled for the first half of next year. While the compilers will be
native, I don't know if optimizations will be available in compilers
provided with the initial EAK (and the compiler engineers may not know
yet either). There may very well be an agreement that comes with
downloading the EAK that forbids public posting of benchmarks.

It is certainly frustrating that the port is taking a long time. But the
original projection of a two-year port beginning in 2015 was predicated
on having a team of 70 doing the port, on not doing Alpha releases, and
probably not doing a bunch of other things they have ended up having to
do but weren't initially planning on doing before the port.  I don't
know how many people are working on the port, but I'm guessing it isn't 70.

The sharply narrowed focus of the latest roadmap suggests that they are
doubling down on the port and making it a top priority. There will
certainly be some opportunities lost by the fact that the first
production release on x86_64 is still a year away (if all goes according
to the current plan). But I have a hard time believing that anyone is
more eager to have it done than the people doing it. So complaining in
the newsgroup about how long it's taking is probably not going to make
it happen faster (though I admit I have certainly done some complaining
myself).