Subject: Re: Vax up and running!
To: None <port-vax@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Allison J Parent <allisonp@world.std.com>
List: port-vax
Date: 10/13/1997 19:40:50
<Yes, the 11/780 is the unit measure by which all of the vast VAX universe
<is metered.  Trivia for newbies: A VUP is a VAX Unix of Processing Power*
<(I guess the power is silent), so technically/semantically/whatever 
<nothing but a VAX can truly be rated in VUPS.

Brian

Take it from an old Digit '83-93, VUP is simply Vax Unit of Performance.  
It was coined to get around the fact that a CISC machines when compared by 
clock or MIPS looked poor while doing fast work.  So it was used to compare 
vaxen for relative performance.  

FYI by clock standard the microvax-II used a 40mhz clock at introduction 
(~85-86) and they current HOT-PC was 12mhz 80286 (the 386 was still 
preliminary in the Intel 1988 databook).  Looking at BYTE for that time 
frame, a turbo XT was the norm and an AT (286/8mhz) was the hot PC box and 
MACs were really hot.  The HD64180 (z180) cpu was still very hot, 
pushing the envelope for 8bit cpus.  Back then .9VUP was screaming for 
a box that size.  Even The it would be years for wintel boxes to catach up 
with the high perfomance disks that was already known to vax. By time the 
386/20 was in production small vaxen were in the 2.5-8 VUP range.  The 
bigger vaxen were in mid two digit range or higher.

Compare contemporaries with same Wintel MMX against Alpha.  The gap still 
exists.

Allison