Subject: 3B2-500s
Date: 16 Aug 88 15:15:38 CDT (Tue)
From: sundc!sun!bradley!j...@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (John Lengeling)

I am thinking about replacing a 310 with a 500, and I was wondering
how a 3B2/500 compares to a 310.  

How much of a performance improvement is a 500 over a 310?
What kind of performance increase can be achieved with adding a:

	VCACHE
	22Mhz system board
	multiple processors

The 310 that I am using is currently 13 simultanious users running large
applications (>350K executables)  The main problem with the machine is that
it needs more memory...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Lengeling			UUCP: {cepu,att,uiucdcs,noao}!bradley!john
Bradley University		ARPA: cepu!bradley!j...@seas.ucla.edu
Distributed Systems  		ATTMAIL: attmail!bradley!john
Bradley Hall Room 6F            PHONE: (309) 677-2337
Peoria, IL 61625

Date: Fri, 19 Aug 88 18:24 CDT
From: sy...@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Charles Boykin-BBS Admin)
Subject: Re:  3B2-500s

   I recently changed killer from a 3B2/400 to a 3B2/500 with 8 MB memory, a
vcache, and a MPB. The 400 was four days behind unpacking/uncompressing the
news batches and was pretty slow. The 500 unpacked the news backlog within
two hours and was completely up to date in 2 1/2 while the CPU was running
at 60% idle during all this. The kernel still has not been tuned for any
change in performance from default and the machine will only go into swapping
when four uncompress processes, two compress processes, and more than five
users on the system - and the most I have seen it swap is ~400 blocks. With
the MPB, the system is rated at 4.0 MIPS with 16ms average disk access time -
I have 2.1 GIG disk space on the system. So, to answer your question, there
is really no comparison between the 310 and the 500 - the 500 is far faster.
The 3B2/400 uses the same system board as the 310 so the machines are virtually
identical except for the ports card cage and the physical capacity of two
hard disks internal. There is an additional enhancement now available for the
500 - a 22 MHZ CPU that will handle two MPB boards and can use the new 16MB
RAM cards - that are the same size as the 4MB cards. This allows 32MB RAM
with the 22MHZ CPU with comparable performance improvements.

                                                   Charlie Boykin
                                                   ..killer!root

Subject: Re: 3B2-500s
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 88 23:21:47 CDT
From: Rich Andrews <sun!texsun!rich%jolnet>

> 
> --- Forwarded mail from necntc!pyramid!cepu!john 
> 
> >From necntc!pyramid!cepu!john  Thu Aug 18 22:45:01 1988 
> Subject: 3B2-500s
> To: bradley!info-3b2
> Date: 16 Aug 88 15:15:38 CDT (Tue)
> From: sundc!sun!bradley!j...@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (John Lengeling)
> Message-Id: <8808161515.AA01...@bradley.UUCP>
> 
> I am thinking about replacing a 310 with a 500, and I was wondering
> how a 3B2/500 compares to a 310.  
> 
> How much of a performance improvement is a 500 over a 310?
> What kind of performance increase can be achieved with adding a:
> 
> 	VCACHE
> 	22Mhz system board
> 	multiple processors
> 
> The 310 that I am using is currently 13 simultanious users running large
> applications (>350K executables)  The main problem with the machine is that
> it needs more memory...
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> John Lengeling			UUCP: {cepu,att,uiucdcs,noao}!bradley!john
> Bradley University		ARPA: cepu!bradley!j...@seas.ucla.edu
> Distributed Systems  		ATTMAIL: attmail!bradley!john
> Bradley Hall Room 6F            PHONE: (309) 677-2337
> Peoria, IL 61625
> 
> --- End of forwarded message from necntc!pyramid!cepu!john 
> 
> -- 
> To submit articles mail to ..!{pacbell,well,netsys,hoptoad}!lamc!info-3b2
> Administravia to info-3b2-request@lamc.
> Co-ordinator: kdavis@lamc (Ken Davis)
> 

upgrading to a 3b2/500 would be an incredible improvement!  It has to be 
experienced!  (right charlie?)  I know for a fact that when killer was 
a 3b2/400 with 4 meg it was 4 days behind in spooling up the news for 
other sites.  It took the 500 about 4 hours to catch up!  Impressive
and awe inspiring!

rich andrews 
SA for jolnet