>Hi,
>
>since there doesn't seem to be a 'native' RC5 client available for
>NetBSD/pmax, I have the Ultrix client running on one of my /133. The
>client itself runs fine - but the performance is *far* below what I
>would expect :-( I have another machine (/240) running Ultrix 4.5 and
>the /133 is about *ten times* slower than the /240... The /240 is
>humming along at about 35-40 kKey/sec. while the /133 crawls at about 4
>kKey/sec...

The obvious question is, "How fast does the client ru on a native
Ultrix 5000/133"?


>Is there something in the Ultrix emulation that causes this dramatic
>slowdown? Both machines are idle most of the time...

Simon Burge ran some tests with CPU-intensive, statically-linked
Ultrix binaries, on two 5000/260s, one running NetBSD and one running
Ultrix.  The Ultrix binaries consistently ran faster on NetBSD.

I'm not awaere of anything in the Ultrix emulation which would cause
such slowdowns. But you could try running a ktrace() on another
copy of the client to see.


The difference here is that your RC5 client is a very long-lived
process; it may be running into scheduler bugs. NetBSD 1.3.3 inherited
some scheduler bugs from 4.4bsd. (iirc, the bug only really impacts on
machines with clockrates noticeably higher than 60Hz, so the pmax is a
candidate for trouble).  what version of netbsd are you running?


>thanks for any enlightment,
>Marc