Hey Eric!
MIP is my typo for mips, not to be confused with the risc processor
made by SGI.  Yep, KL was aviable before 780.  I was being snide in my
comment, in that the 780 VUP measure was intended to establish 
a new measure, the vax unit of perf because everyone was twisting
the meaning of MIPS.  If you did the math with a 6502@4MHZ or a Z80@4MHZ
you could stretch the definition of MIPS so that each of those 
achieved a demonstrable 1MIPS rate.  Lots of folks started doing
some funky math that allowed them to say that their machine was a
1MIPS or more box based on cycle time, and that was challenged so that
the definition was refined to be more accurate.  Using the funky math,
we designed a 10MIPS pdp8 in 1978...we did not build it....

bob

Eric Smith wrote:
> 
> hg/jb <shsrms@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> > Vup is equivalent to approx .9 of the mythological MIP (where the KL10
> > was 1.0 MIP in 1980).
> 
> I'm not sure what a MIP is, but assuming your talking about MIPS, the
> "standard MIPS" is a generally considered to be a VAX 11/780.  The
> MicroVAX II runs some benchmarks at about 0.9 MIPS, and is the standard for
> VUPS, hence the broad generalization that 1.0 VUPS = 0.9 MIPS.
> 
> The KL10 was available three years earlier than the VAX 11/780, and
> typically benchmarks at more than twice the speed.