3B2/600 Poor disk performance

[Mike Verstegen]

A few months ago, Tim Bray (tbray at watsol.waterloo.edu) posted the disk
performance utility 'bonnie'. I finally got around to running it on our
3B2/600 with disappointing results. The following table shows the results
of our tests, along with comparisons to 386[DS]X processors and some other
well known boxes.

              -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
              -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU
3B2/600    32    39 44.2    50 15.5    26 14.3    46 53.0    46 12.5   4.9 13.6
325 2.0.2  32   173 90.8   138 18.0   192 43.6   161 95.1   452 59.0   9.7 24.5
MLC386SX   10    39 75.4    63 21.9    65 26.4    54 97.3   338 79.5  13.4 42.1

Sun4/260   78   285 90.9   650 26.4   305 20.0   282 95.5   803 28.3  38.5 15.2
Mips M2k  180   387 44.0   442  6.1   360  5.4   416 48.1  1701 14.8  26.3  3.1
Sequent    95   140 97.8  1017 66.2   251 17.7   122 95.7   713 34.9  31.0 15.9
4M i386    25   130 90.5   199 26.1   179 46.1   121 93.5   400 59.7  10.5 23.8
NeXT      125   241 94.7   347 39.3   253 31.7   246 94.8   772 49.6  27.7 20.8
VAX 8650  200   208 89.0   232  8.3   143  7.4   197 65.0   373  8.6  17.3  4.6

Notes:	- 3B2/600 with 8 MB memory, Unix V.3.1 (Mike Verstegen mdv at domain.com)
	- 325 is Dell Model 325 386 @ 25 MHz with 8 MB memory, ISC Unix 2.0.2
	  (Mike Verstegen mdv at domain.com)
	- MCL386SX is a 386SX with 4 MB RAM SCO Unix V.3.2, Conner 107 MB
	  Disk (Jack Cloninger jmc at teqsoft)
	- Sun, Mips, etc. values provided by Tim Bray
	  (tbray at watsol.waterloo.edu), the author of bonnie.
	- File size tested was limited by amount of free disk space on each
	  machine

The 3B2 can't even beat a 386SX machine! Has anyone else experienced similar
dismal performance on the 3B2's? Any suggestions before we scrap everything
for PCs?
--
Mike Verstegen          Domain Systems, Inc           Voice +1 407 686-7911
..!uunet!comtst!mdv     5840 Corporate Way #100       Fax   +1 407 478-2542
mdv at domain.com          West Palm Beach, FL 33407