Wow, I just ran the obligatory Dhrystone benchmark on the VS3100/M76 and
this thing has some serious zing to it.

Machine        NetBSD   dhry/s    dhry/s
Type           version  (no otp)  (-O2)
------------   -------  --------  --------
MicroVAX II    1.3       1319      2242	
VS3100/M38     1.3E      2325      3968
VS3100/M76     1.3      12195     20833

For comparison
i386DX/40      OpenBSD  12820     22727 
               2.1

I know, benchmarks aren't terribly accurate measurements of machine
performance as they're very specific and limited in what they're
representing, but benchmarks are fun.

I noticed the following during the boot of the NetBSD/vax kernel on 
the M76:

 cpu0 at backplane0: VAXstation 3100 model 76
 clearing tags...
 primary cache status: 21a<DPERR,HIT,REFRESH,ENABLE>
 secondary cache status: ffe1<TPE,DPE,MISS,ENABLE>

So I imagine the presence of this cache helps out things a whole lot.
This also leads me to wonder now if the other VAXstation models have their
cache enabled?  The M38 should be much closer to 8000-10000 dhry/s I would
think.  I'll work on getting the numbers for the VS2000 as well.

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!