re: UltraSPARC III processor varieties

[matthew green <mrg%eterna.com.au@localhost>]

      So, I was familiar with many of the UltraSPARC II vs IIi vs IIe  
   issues, but have been out of a Solaris world long enough that it's  
   really only the old hardware I use for NetBSD that I watch anymore.   
   So, in looking at UltraSPARC III's, there appear to be at least III's  
   (900 Mhz (and above?)), and IIIi's (900Mhz up to 1.5Ghzish) processors  
   in Sun machines.  Are there significant pro's or con's to one over  
   another, and does NetBSD's support of the UltraSPARC III prefer any  
   variety of the processor?


i don't think it matters.  i initially was mostly working with 1.2ghz
USIII cpus, but now mostly use 1.28ghz USIIIi cpus.

i haven't found any real details, but the USIIIi seems slightly less
crippled compared to USIII than the USIIi/IIe were to the USII.  the
biggest difference is obvious though -- 4MB vs 16MB ecache.

my scant performance testing so far only showed me something i'd
expect to see comparing these two cpus -- no clear winner :)


note that these systems are still unstable under most forms of load,
except for cpu intensive tasks, which can run for days.


.mrg.