[Virtualacorn-list] Speed of Iyonix??

[Tim Powys-Lybbe]

In message of 7 Oct, Roger Darlington <rogerarm at freeuk.com> wrote:

> 
> My earlier question asked about a replacement Iyonix, by using some 
> sort of VRPC.
> 
> However, I have since heard that even if I had the fastest Mac 
> possible, a 3.2GHz 8-core thingy, it will not run at equal or greater 
> than the Iyonixs; speed, but much less, maybe only 30% of the Iyonixs' 
> speed.
> 
> I would therefore need a 10GHz Mac just to break-even with Iyonixs' 
> speed, let alone surpass it.
> 
> Comments please?
> 
> What speed (using image processing on VRPC/SA-VRPC or JPEG-picture 
> viewing on the VRPC/SA0-VRPC do people see in relation to that of an 
> Iyonix?

With my 2.8Ghz 8-core thingy all I have managed to do are some simple
tests of loading a 75M sprite into various graphics programs on both
Iyonix (RAM = 512M) and Mac (RAM = 256M):

                    VARPC on Mac         Iyonix          %
                    ------------         ------          -
                      
  DplngScan 1.24         50               21            42
  
  Paint 2.56/2.00        44                3             7
  
  Photodesk 3.08         61               17            29

While Paint 2.00 is the latest version in a sense, for obvious reasons
it would not run on VARPC and said there was insufficient memory.

Doing the odd transformation on the loaded images then gave a similar
impression of loss of speed.  The only test I know for measuring
processing power of a RISC OS machine is loading the famous ArtWorks
Apple but the 74K Apple4 file loaded in a bare 2 seconds on the Mac
VARPC and a mere second on the Iyonix, both too short to time
accurately.

Anyone know of a fair test of processing power between machines?

> What is the way forward?  An X-scale-Virtual Acorn??

Win the Lottery is the best answer I've heard.

-- 
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim at powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/