A new benchmark tool

[verdraith]

Yes, that's a given -- no benchmarking software should ever use a simulated or emulated platform as the baseline unless the simulation or emulation is proven to be 100% accurate and bug-compatible.

But, for the time being, the numbers being provided by Previous are not problematic, as this is all still alpha-quality software.

If anyone owns a 25MHz '030, please DM me so baseline test criteria can be established (e.g. running NXFactor a few times).

[crimsonRE]

I will try to run this on my '030 Cube at some point in the next couple of days if possible, sir!

[verdraith]

Awesome.  I've asked Rob if he can run some stuff too.

Here's the suggested hardware:

CPU	25MHz '030 NeXT Computer
RAM	16MB
OS	NEXTSTEP 3.3 (fully patched if possible)
HDD	spinning metal disk, if possible

The protocol:

• Ensure no other app is running (not even Preferences).  Hide Workspace, and command-double-click the NSBench icon.
• Run NXFactor benchmark 3 times.  Provide full log output for all 3 runs.  Averages will be taken.
• Run NXMark (CoreMark) 3 times.  Provide total scores for all 3 runs.  Average will be taken.
• Do a little dance.  Do another little dance.  Average performance will be taken.
• Submit results to me via DM or as a reply to this thread.

At all stages, allow a sufficient gap between each execution for the 5 minute load average to reduce to 0.  This would usually be between 5 to 6 minutes of no activity.

[zombie]

If we're going with the original cube, it only had 8MB of storage and only the magneto optical? Why not make that the benchmark?

[verdraith]

How many people still use an OD, I wonder.

Will NeXTSTEP 3.3 fit on an OD with enough usable space for the swap file?

A 25MHz '030 with 16MB RAM and a SCSI HDD is the 'server' configuration that NeXT offered.  I feel that's a more reasonable baseline given that most people probably own tricked out black hardware by now

[zombie]

Yes, NS fit on an OD. NS had to fit on 105MB HD because that became the entry level for slabs.

[verdraith]

You missed the qualifier on that question.

Hint: with 8MB of RAM, the swap will grow beyond 16MB after first boot.  It could grow as high as 60MB once the NXFactor benchmark has finished.

[verdraith]

Actually, sorry, seems I was wrong.

After seeing just how much room would remain on an OD with just the base of NS3.3 installed, I noticed that it builds the disk with custom minfree value.

Usually, newfs wants at least 10% of the disk as a buffer zone, so when you reach 100% disk usage, you're actually at 91% disk usage -- a trick that tries to avoid data loss, and to give the admins time to deal with the situation.

Seems at ~68MB, a base install leaves plenty of disk for a 60MB swap file.  I'll see just how much as soon as BuildDisk finishes and I can boot off it.

[zombie]

You missed the qualifier on that question.

Hint: with 8MB of RAM, the swap will grow beyond 16MB after first boot.  It could grow as high as 60MB once the NXFactor benchmark has finished.

You do not have to give me a hint. I had and used a base machine for quite a while. I worked at NeXT. I remember when we had to add a 40MB hard drive to the optical cube just to help with the swap performance.That was sold as a 'no cost' bonus for a little time.

The base magneto optical only machine weirdly worked well. You could not do a lot of multitasking. But it did work. Weirdly reminded me of my experience with a base 128k Mac when it first came out.

And space was not the problem. Lame performance of the optical drive really was the bottleneck. But.... It was fascinating just how well it worked considering the weird chunky tech.

Next's DMA chip was really something special for its time (and quite a bit of time beyond release it was still superior to most everything out there in how well the optical drive did not bottle neck as much as it would on other systems--I remember moving to intel and that subsystem still was superior to the otherwise way faster intel hardware).

[verdraith]

You do not have to give me a hint. I had and used a base machine for quite a while. I worked at NeXT. I remember when we had to add a 40MB hard drive to the optical cube just to help with the swap performance.That was sold as a 'no cost' bonus for a little time.

And I think that was a mistake with the NeXT Computer at launch.  I think there should have been a faster dedicated backing-store / swapfile drive in the machine alongside the OD.

Having grown up in the 'real' Unix world of swap slices, using the rule of thumb of 'your swap slice is twice the amount of physical RAM', I've seen what happens when you run out of swap.  Even now I grind my teeth when I see someone build any sort of Unix or Unix-like system with no swap slice.

Conversely, I've seen what happens when you run out of disk space due to a swap file.  On both NeXT and macOS. At least these days macOS forces you to reboot -- found that out after Emacs managed to generate 75 gigabytes of swapfile thanks to flycheck-mode not clearing its buffer when I got to code-review 10,000+ lines of PHP.

The base magneto optical only machine weirdly worked well. You could not do a lot of multitasking. But it did work. Weirdly reminded me of my experience with a base 128k Mac when it first came out.

The idea that you take your entire install with you on a removable disk was an awesome idea, and I'm kinda sad it didn't catch on at the time.  The hardware could have matured.  I mean, we could practically do the same thing in the late 90s thanks to USB.  I think if swap had been on its own dedicated device outside of the OD, things would have been better.

Imagine if you could go back in time and show engineers what USB can do.

And space was not the problem. Lame performance of the optical drive really was the bottleneck. But.... It was fascinating just how well it worked considering the weird chunky tech.

I feel a lot of things were clunky back then... clunky but worked weirdly well -- like the DG AViiON allowing you to share one SCSI disk between two machines.

Anyway, I made an incorrect assumption on newfs and base install size,  and assumed the OD would not have enough remaining space for swap.

My test install leaves ~140MB... so that's ~80MB with a worst-case swapfile of 60MB.

So, there's no reason why the baseline couldn't be done with 8MB and an OD... the question is simply: is there anyone with a working OD?

On a separate note, I think I'm going to modify and use `iozone` for the disk benchmarking -- ~80MB is enough for iozone to write out a 42MB test file.

[Rob Blessin Black Hole]

Here is a great doc on all aspects of the swap file in NeXTSTEP hopefully it will help . I remember having to clear the swap file back in the day when ram pricing  was in the stratosphere and we were testing the limits of NeXT hardware and software . I was actually using it in a work environment and the 3rd party products and NeXT email made it so easy. Once we had everything set up. So the swapfile would build up because I was toggling between 7 or 8 apps on a color station all day... the intel boxes afforded faster processing and more ram .  The integration on the NeXT 68K hardware was and still is amazing.  https://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/FAQ/Swapfiles/TjL's%20Swapfile%20&%20Swapdisk%20FAQ.pdf 

[barcher174]

Both working optical disks -and- original 5.25" hdds that have not degraded are going to be in very short supply. I feel like we're splitting hairs on the baseline. An original 68030 w/ any standard hdd and 16mb of ram should be totally reasonable considering the target will be either NS3.3 or OS4.2. Most still in service cubes would have ditched the MO only config by that time anyway.

[barcher174]

Also very nice looking app. I'm particularly interested in how some of my more exotically upgraded sun machines will compare. 

[zombie]

Both working optical disks -and- original 5.25" hdds that have not degraded are going to be in very short supply. I feel like we're splitting hairs on the baseline. An original 68030 w/ any standard hdd and 16mb of ram should be totally reasonable considering the target will be either NS3.3 or OS4.2. Most still in service cubes would have ditched the MO only config by that time anyway.

I really regret selling my old cube back in the day. I had an original optical drive and I had a really great cleaning kit for it that I used. It worked great and never had a bit of trouble with and I did use it as the main and SOLE boot drive for a good while.

Do not get me wrong, when I was finally able to afford the 660MB maxtor hard drive from next (and I think it cost around $3000 back in the day, so not cheap), it was like the heavens parted. While it was shocking the machine could work only with a magnetoOptical drive, you never wanted to run the machine that way.

As for why split hairs, well if not, why not put in a loaded max next turbo dimension? And should we test it with an SSD plugged into the SCSI bus instead because that's no longer practical?  I could see an argument for being very origin story, and very 'end of story' for the benchmark.

In that this X times faster than how the first NeXT was. Or X times faster than the best NeXT machine there ever was. Kind of a cool factor either way.

As for in between, it's fine, and obviously up to the developer, but just seems somehow less informative than either of those extreme cases.  Just my view. Reasonable folks can and will differ.

As always, YMMV.

[barcher174]

I had the thought maybe we could use the minimum system requirements for NS 3.3, but I can't find any mention of them (RAM, HDD size) in the install docs. I guess they were never published for black hardware?