Re: Trivia: Processor MHz

Maybe run VB.Net. ;p

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
http://www.rutgersinsurance.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com>
To: <midrange-l@midrange.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2001 3:47 PM
Subject: RE: Trivia: Processor MHz


> I think this is what some of the other posters may have been referring to
> when they stated that MHz alone as a measuring stick is meaningless.
While
> it's not meaningless, MHz alone is not a sufficient guide.  While a 252MHz
> CPU may be underpowered for some applications, particularly the more
> inefficient Windows applications, it is more than powerful enough for what
> the iSeries does, namely business transaction processing.
>
> This is for two reasons: iSeries applications do far more database access
on
> much larger databases than most desktop applications, and iSeries machines
> have many independent processors that offload the majority of the
peripheral
> processing that is relegated to the primary CPU on desktops.  Try to run
an
> application that needs to sort a hundred million customer records on a
1GHz
> Windows machine as opposed to a lowly 252MHz iSeries, and you'll see what
I
> mean.
>
> So back to your point about "modern programming languages".  What do you
> consider modern?  Java?  In many cases, this is due to the fact that
people
> insist on using JDBC in their Java applications, which is fundamentally
much
> slower than native database access.  It makes little difference on a
Windows
> machine, because there are no peripheral subprocessors in the first place
> and the database already performs poorly, but when you add the overhead of
> JDBC to the overhead of SQL on an iSeries, you are definitely going to
have
> performance issues.
>
> A well written RPG application still processes database transactions
faster
> than any Windows machine.  So I question what you mean my "modern
> programming language" and instead I'd ask you to define a specific
> application where the iSeries box does not measure up to a Windows
machine.
> My guess is that not one database-intensive application will appear in
your
> list, which simply bolsters my contention that we need to focus on the
> iSeries as a database transaction server, and leave the CPU intensive
stuff,
> particularly graphics, to the gigahertz desktop machines.
>
> Joe