NumberCruncher

by Andreas Schmidt

picture of a NumberCruncher card

NumberCruncher Features


Benchmarks

Here are some Benchmarks using ORCA/Pascal's direct 68881 support for the NumberCruncher. The MHz column means at what speed a plain IIGS has to run to get the test done in the same time:

Test MHz Seconds Ticks
3 * 1899 Primes 12.67 0.25 15
10 * Fibonacci 9.46 7.80 468
Quicksort: 1000 Strings 8.39 1.55 93
1000 Iterations of Float 55.95 1.62 97
15000 Gamm Units 24.06 2.62 157
Savage 560.56 0.30 18
Integer Math 11.74 8.47 508

Primes: Calculates the first 1899 prime numbers with the sieve of Eratosthenes.

Fibonacci: Recursively computes Fibonacci numbers to test the speed of procedure calls.

QuickSort: Sort alphabetically 1000 10 character strings.

Float: Test simple floating point operations.

Gamm: Test the speed of floating point operations in a mix that is typical of scientific and engineering applications.

Savage: Test the speed (and stability) of floating point functions like arctan, exp, ln, sqrt.

Integer Math: Test the speed of the four basic integer math operations.

The tests are done on a ROM 03 GS with a TransWarp running at 13.75 MHz. Please note that the figures below 13.75 MHz don't mean that the NC is slowing down the TransWarp. This is the real effective speed compared to a 1 MHz GS (Yes, I actually ran the tests at 1 MHz :) I get an average speed of 11.1 MHz on these tests wo/ NC, and only Primes (13.57 MHz) and Fibonacci (9.6 MHz) are slightly faster.


Availability

The NumberCruncher card is not available at the moment, and it is very uncertain if this will change in the near future.

The card will be sold with or without the coprocessor chip. If you already have a FPE with the copro socketed, you can use this coprocessor for the NC. You can use any 68881 or 882 in a ceramic package that runs at least 10 Mhz. The NC runs at this speed (more is not necessary since the slot I/O is the bottleneck).

For orders or exact shipping info please contact

Andreas Schmidt
San Jose,  California
USA
Phone: +1-408-768-1088
Email: Andreas Schmidt or Dirk Fröhling