106 mip PC

[Mike Rubin]

In article <12487 at netcom.UUCP> jbreeden at netcom.uucp (John Breeden) writes:
>Does anyone know any details about AT&T's Starserver E? The lit I have 
>says it's a true symmetrical, multiprocessor 33mhz 486 (4 processors).
>They claim a MIP rating of 106MIPS (yea!, I know. That's faster than
>a 3090!), and they are shipping it!

Neither the additional processor boards, nor an operating system to
handle them, exist yet.  The box does contain the inter-processor bus
so you will be able to just plug in the extra processors.
The 106-MIP rating is calculated, not observed.
(It's my opinion that AT&T public relations is being less than clear
on these points.)

What you can buy today is the 1 processor configuration, which is
a full-out 33 MHz 486 with Weitek 4167 math coprocessor and DPT
EISA-bus SCSI disk controller.  Production is still quite limited
due to the scarcity of 33 MHz 486's.  I wouldn't doubt the 26 MIPS
single-processor figure; it really does scream.  SCSI performance is
in line with other DPT controllers (not in line with a 3090 :-),
more and faster disks might help.

Unix (SVR4.0) runs on the machine but the Unix C compiler does not yet
support the Weitek.

The parallel operating system is being jointly developed with Pyramid
and bears some resemblance to what you see on current Pyramid machines
(except that it's SVR4.0 based instead of BSD).
The "true symmetrical multiprocessor" stuff means that (unlike e.g. the
dual-processor Compaq) all processors will be able to run kernel code
and do I/O.

--Mike Rubin <mike at attunix.att.com, leaving soon for heaven.knows.where>

[Disclaimer: So far as I know everything stated here is public knowledge.]