From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2009-01-29T21:12:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby on Solaris 10 performance problems

2009/1/28 Colin Mackenzie <colmac@gmail.com>:
> We just installed ruby on a
> Sun T1000, 6 core UltraSPARC T1 cpu, 4G memory  , Solaris 10
>
> Right now Windows is out performing an Ultra SPARC by 25 seconds! Does
> anyone know why this would be the case.

SPARC processors are slow, raw CPU speed is not among the strengths of
those beasts - especially since Ruby does not use native threads.
You're putting the load on a single core only (well, your test does
not contain any concurrency anyway :-) ).

It's pretty easy to see why: RISC has fewer machine instructions which
take one clock to execute. Nowadays CISC processors come close to
taking one clock as well by using pipelining, branch prediction and
what not. But CISC processor commands are more powerful, so you need
multiple RISC commands to do the same amount of work. And since clock
speeds slowly reach physical limits RISC cannot compensate with higher
clock rates.  That's why RISK is falling behind.  IMHO it's a dead
technology.

Kind regards

robert

-- 
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