On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Colin Wood wrote:

> Chris Jones wrote:
> 
> > I've also looked at the G3 powermacs,
> > which are supposed to be fast, but I'm not convinced NetBSD/macppc is
> > stable enough yet.
> 
> G3 FP performance is not really all that good, perhaps slightly better
> than a high-end Pentium II processor.  A fast 604e-based machine has
> better FP, I think.

The G3 is a 750 processor. On a per-megahertz basis, the 750 is capable of
outperforming the 604e on all speed and benchmark tests. It can do more
per cycle than the 604e. Check motorola's homepage for more information:

http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/products/semiconductor/cpu/604.html
http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/products/semiconductor/cpu/750.html

> > Specifics of the machines above, I can get on my own; I'm just wondering
> > if there's anything else that I'm missing.  (You know, that 800 GFLOP
> > processor that costs 20 bucks.  :)
> 
> I don't know of anything that has really good FP performance other than
> IBM's POWER3 parts, and I seriously doubt they're all that cheap.

They aren't cheap. I haven't seen them used in any home computing though.
They are planning (not sure if they've gone through with it yet) to
upgrade a 4,096 processor supercomputer to Power3 chips sometime this
year, for the U.S. Dept of Energy at Lawrence Livermore Labs..

Marc Tooley