[Simh] Simh performance on HP servers

[Boucher, François]

With the recent thread on VAX/VMS licences transferables on HP servers, i 
though I might share two performance results with users of the list.

On a HP DL360 G5 running on two Intel Xeon Quad core CPU, 3.0GHz, 1333MHzFSB 
Linux RedHat Enterprise Advanced server 4.7 32 bits, we achieve
30.0 VUPs of speed using SRI PT_VAX.EXE benchmark utility.

On a HP RX2600 Integrity server, running with two Itaniums II 1.5GHz,
6MB cache CPUs, 10GB of RAM, 
Linux RedHat Enterprise Advanced server 4.7 IA64 (64bits) OS,
We achieve 7.6 VUPs of speed, using the same SRI's PT_VAX.EXE benchmark.

Both results were obtained by running a compiled version of simh 3.7-3
from the same source code on both servers.  The compiler is gcc 3.4, 
furnished with the RedHat distribution.
 
Simulator wise, I think the faster results are largely related to the
front side bus speed.  This FSB speed gives the speed at wich the simulated
CPU goes into simulated memory to fetch the next operand/data.

Another pointer, is that we installed 5 running SIMH instances of simulated
Vaxes into the DL360G5, to simulate a cluster of 5 vaxes with success.
They only need one Ethernet interface per running instance.

So far, the best executing performance was obtained with the intel quad-core
CPU types.

Wish to all a nice day,

Francois Boucher ing.
UQAM