Re: Looking For FPE or FastMath Cards!!!I

[dirk@gaga.maschinenbau.uni-dortmund.de (Dirk Froehling)]

OK, once again the NumberCruncher info. I am currently making a list and
there are already four people interested. So maybe we can get enough people
together!

Dirk

NumberCruncher features:

- totally compatible with the FPE from Innovative Systems

- much less sensible to heat, voltage problems etc.

- supports the FPE SANE patch for speeding up any program that does
  floating point calculations

- you can compile ORCA/Pascal and C programs to use the it directly
  with the special floatlib for the FPE provided by ByteWorks

- works in any slot (slot 3 & 4 without need for setting it to "Your
  Card")

- works with TransWarp GS and Zip GS accellerators and RamFAST SCSI
  card

The current price of a NumberCruncher card without 68881 is DM 250,-
plus shipping. If you already have a FPE with the copro socketed, you
can use it. You can use any 68881 or 882 in a ceramic package that runs
at least 10 Mhz. The NC runs at this speed (more is not necessary since
the slot I/O is the bottleneck). The price for NC+881 is not clear at
the moment,but you are probably better off getting the 68881 by
yourself. The current exchange rate is about 1$ = 1.50 DM I think, so
DM250 will be $167.

For orders or exact shipping info please contact

Andreas Schmidt Ruesingstr. 59 D-44894 Bochum Germany

Phone:    (011 49) 234 9230 833 FAX:      (011 49) 234 9230 846
Internet: as@mez.ruhr-uni-bochum.de


Here are some Benchmarks using ORCA/Pascal's direct 68881 support for
the NumberCruncher. The MHz column means at what speed a plain IIGS has
to run to get the test done in the same time:


The Tests:                     MHz    Seconds    Ticks

3 * 1899 Primes at           12.67       0.25       15
10 * Fibonacci at             9.46       7.80      468
Quicksort: 1000 Strings at    8.39       1.55       93
1000 Iterations of Float at  55.95       1.62       97
15000 Gamm Units at          24.06       2.62      157
Savage at                   560.56       0.30       18
Integer Math at              11.74       8.47      508


Primes: Calculates the first 1899 prime numbers with the sieve of
Eratosthenes.

Fibonacci: Recursively computes Fibonacci numbers to test the speed of
procedure calls.

QuickSort: Sort alphabetically 1000 10 character strings.

Float: Test simple floating point operations.

Gamm: Test the speed of floating point operations in a mix that is
typical of scientific and engineering applications.

Savage: Test the speed (and stability) of floating point functions like
arctan, exp, ln, sqrt.

Integer Math: Test the speed of the four basic integer math operations.


The tests are done on a ROM 03 GS with a TransWarp running at 13.75
MHz. Please note that the figures below 13.75 MHz don't mean that the
NC is slowing down the TransWarp. This is the real effective speed
compared to a 1 MHz GS (Yes, I actually ran the tests at 1 MHz :) I get
an average speed of 11.1 MHz on these tests wo/ NC, and only Primes
(13.57 MHz) and Fibonacci (9.6 MHz) are slightly faster.

-- 
| Dirk Froehling - Germany, Uni Dortmund, FB Maschinenbau, LS Mechanik |
| dirk@gaga.maschinenbau.uni-dortmund.de            GEnie: D.FROEHLING |