[Info-vax] VUPS.COM relevance for modern CPUs

[pos]

On Friday, 16 December 2022 at 11:57:36 UTC, Mark Daniel wrote:
> Now, before everyone piles on, I understand the procedure provides an 
> indicative/comparative/finger-in-the-air measurement of the relative 
> performance of a VMS CPU relative to "the original VAX processor". 
> 
> It states as much in the prologue: 
> 
> |$! Provides an estimate of system CPU performance on OpenVMS systems. 
> |$! Use at your own risk. 
> 
> To clarify the platform of a particular run I added: 
> 
> |$ write sys$output f$fao("!AS with !UL CPU and !ULMB running VMS !AS",- 
> |f$edit(f$getsyi("hw_name"),"compress,trim"),- 
> |f$getsyi("availcpu_cnt"),- 
> |(f$getsyi("memsize")*(f$getsyi("page_size")/512)/2048),- 
> |f$edit(f$getsyi("version"),"collapse")) 
> 
> which provides the likes of: 
> 
> |HP rx2660 (1.40GHz/6.0MB) with 4 CPU and 14335MB running VMS V8.4-2L1 
> |Digital Personal WorkStation with 1 CPU and 1536MB running VMS V8.4-2L1 
> |innotek GmbH VirtualBox with 2 CPU and 7574MB running VMS V9.2 
> 
> It seems to be implemented as a tight DCL loop that executes almost 
> entirely in inner modes (I'm sure Brian can explain why). 
> 
> $ start_cputime = f$getjpi(0,"CPUTIM") 
> $ loop_index = 0 
> $ 10$: 
> $ loop_index = loop_index + 1 
> $ if loop_index .ne. init_loop_maximum then goto 10$ 
> $ end_cputime = f$getjpi(0,"CPUTIM") 
> 
> |Combined for 2 CPUs 0 50 100 150 200 
> | Interrupt State | | 
> | MP Synchronization | | 
> | Kernel Mode 21 |▒▒▒▒ | 
> | Executive Mode 21 |▒▒▒▒ | 
> | Supervisor Mode 58 |▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ | 
> | User Mode | | 
> | Compatibility Mode | | 
> | Idle Time 99 |▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ | 
> 
> 100% (or all-but) of this execution appears to be in inner modes. 
> Although X86 (above) seems to to have much more Kernel than other 
> architectures, e.g. IA64 below). There is no USER mode displayed in either. 
> 
> |Combined for 4 CPUs 0 100 200 300 400 
> | Interrupt State 1 | | 
> | MP Synchronization | | 
> | Kernel Mode 5 | | 
> | Executive Mode 18 |▒ | 
> | Supervisor Mode 78 |▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ | 
> | User Mode | | 
> | Not Available | | 
> | Idle Time 299 |▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ | 
> 
> There appear to be (at least) two versions of these procedures. The 
> later contains: 
> 
> |$! Modified: MAY-2010: Code updated by Volker Halle to address the 
> |$! following issues: 
> 
> and tweaks a few of the calculations. 
> 
> There also appear to be earlier tweaks allowing for Alpha processors 
> 
> |$ cpu_multiplier = 10 ! VAX = 10 - Alpha/AXP = 40 
> |$ cpu_round_add = 1 ! VAX = 1 - Alpha/AXP = 9 
> 
> but none for Itanium. 
> 
> Are the Alpha tweaks sufficient to allow relevance for all 64bit CPUs? 
> 
> Are further tweaks required to make measurements on Itania relevant? 
> 
> And of course the same question for the successor to all three 
> architectures? 
> 
> -- 
> Anyone, who using social-media, forms an opinion regarding anything 
> other than the relative cuteness of this or that puppy-dog, needs 
> seriously to examine their critical thinking.

Not sure if people remember these, but the  DEC/Compaq Enterprise Capacity Planner had *.DBA files that listed SPEC values for pretty much every vendor at the with normalised data. The Enterprise Capacity Planner was bought out by its engineers in 2001 (as that was the only part of Polycenter (PSPA/PSDC/PSCP) not given to CA in 1997) and today lists most vendors, and CPUs to for SPEC 95 to SPEC 2017. Both spec int and spec rate are included.  www.perfcap.com. I still use the ECP today, which was ported to Linux. The data is interesting, performance is getting wider *more cores, not faster (faster cores). The files are user editiable to add future predicted CPU speeds for modelling purposes.
Merry Christmas one and all.
Paul.