Article 2136 of dec.notes.technology.dechips:
Title: MIPS R10000 @ 200MHz
Reply Title: (none)

A few days ago I received a note sent to the 'CCT Users Group' asking
about the performance of the Cooper & Chyan Specctra Printed Circuit Router.
The user also said essentially 'I expect it might be fast on Alpha if it were 
ported to it'.  Several other users wrote follow on notes about Specctra
performance, all saying that in their experience it ran the fastest
on SGI machines.  A user from SGI reiterated that in his experience
SGI won all their benchmarks.  He gratiously (confidently) sent us
the benchmark he has been using and we ran it on several machines
we had here.  The following is the note I just sent to the CCT user's 
distribution.
Bob Armstrong
--------------
Specctra Performance

A few days ago, Perry sent out a note asking about 'which box is the fastest'.
Clearly this is a moving target, but I gotta admit I was a little dismayed
that he didn't seem to know that it ran on Digital's Alpha machines.

Lon Tidwell was gracious enough to send us his benchmark and we ran it
on a few machines we had here...not necessarily the fastest nor tuned
at all for a real benchmark.  But we wanted to give you some idea.

This benchmark is probably too small for real comparisons.  But here
are some results (Lon provided the SGI numbers).  We included some
stats from the Specctra output at the end.
bob armstrong

Workstations:                       

    Type/Model                        O/S              CCT Ver     Time (sec)

  DIGITAL AlphaStation 500 5/500    Digital Unix 4.0    V6.0.0      45 
    Alpha 21164 500Mhz/2M Cache
    CPU: Single (Networked)
       
  SGI Solid IMPACT 10K	            SGI IRIS 5.3        V6.0.9      65
    R10K 195Mhz / 2M Cache
    CPU: Single (Networked)     
					  

Servers:
	
    Type/Model                        O/S              CCT Ver     Time (sec)

  DIGITAL Alphaserver 4100 5/533    Digital Unix 4.0    V6.0.0      41
    Alpha 21164 533Mhz/??M Cache
    CPU: Multi (?? installed)

  DIGITAL Alphaserver 8400 5/300    Digital Unix 3.2    V6.0.0      62
    Alpha 21164 300Mhz/2M Cache
    CPU: Multi (12 installed)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#SPECCTRA Version V6.0.3 made 96/01/26 at 18:35:51
#Host 0000f8033174
#ROUTING STATUS <<< ./test.dsn >>>
Start  Time: Fri Dec 13 12:53:58 1996
Report Time: Fri Dec 13 12:54:39 1996

Nets         =      109   Connections         =      165
Current Wire =       65   Reroute wires       =       65
Completion   =  100.00%   Unconnections       =        0
| ROUTING HISTORY ================================================================
|     Pass     |   Conflicts |    |     |     |     |    |Red|      CPU Time     |
|   Name   |No.| Cross| Clear|Fail|Unrte| Vias|XTalk|Len.| % |  Pass   |  Total  |
|----------+---+------+------+----+-----+-----+-----+----+---+---------+---------|
| Route    |  1|   820|    37|   0|    0|  119|    0|   0|   |  0:00:05|  0:00:05|
| Route    |  2|   364|     2|   0|    0|  159|    0|   0| 57|  0:00:12|  0:00:17|
| Route    |  3|   165|     4|   0|    0|  206|    0|   0| 53|  0:00:10|  0:00:27|
| Route    |  4|    36|     0|   0|    0|  237|    0|   0| 78|  0:00:08|  0:00:35|
| Route    |  5|     0|     0|   0|    0|  269|    0|   0|100|  0:00:06|  0:00:41|