.nj .nf .rm 65 .ce 6 .bd 6 DN320 PRODUCT NOTE DESKTOP COMPUTATIONAL NODE WITH FLOATING POINT Anil Gadre .bd 1 INTRODUCTION We are pleased to announce floating point capability for the DN300 as well as a doubling of disk storage capacity. These have been frequently requested by you and your customers and should help us make the DN3xx even more successful than it has already been. This Product Note will descibe the DN320 and attempt to clarify some issues that have surfaced recently as well. I would like to recommend the DN300 Product Note by Jeff Wilson (1/17/83) as supplementary material regarding the DN3xx basics (architec- ture, display system, packaging etc). Your Sales Guides have include this material in it. .bd 1 WHAT IS THE DN320 The DN320 is the DN300's counterpart that offers floating point hardware. In addition to all the features of the DN300, it offers: . 1.5M bytes of memory standard . Hardware floating point unit to boost performance . Compatibility of object code between the 420/600 with PEB . Performance that exceeds that of the DN420/600 with PEB . 34M and 70M winchester disk options. .bd 1 AND ALWAYS REMEMBER THE KEY APOLLO STRENGTHS! - PREDICTABLE PERFORMANCE FOR EVERY USER - dedicated power - INTEGRATION OF GRAPHICS, NETWORKING, DATABASE - RESOURCE SHARING NETWORK - the only true network wide virtual memory access - STANDARD SETTING PRICE/PERFORMANCE - EXTENSIVE THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE SUPPORT - WORLD WIDE SALES AND SERVICE .bp .bd 1 POSITIONING: Which node works best and where? The DN300 - is our low cost desktop workstation. - is best for applications requiring moderate power for both computation and graphics. - Applications: software engineering, technical documentation/illustration, publishing, The DN320 - offers computation peformance exceeding that previously available with our DN420/600 workstations with a PEB. - Applications: finite element pre and post processing (geometry definition etc), drafting, schematic capture, circuit design and simulation among many others. The DN460 - is our high performance workstation - is well suited for applications requiring high computation power and moderate graphics power The DN660 - is the premier high performance workstation for the technical professional - offers the highest in graphics and compute performance we offer to tackle demanding applications .bd 1 PERFORMANCE The performance of the DN320 will exceed that of the DN300 and that of the DN420/600 products: - 2 to 3 times floating point performance of the DN300 - 5 to 25% better in floating point than the 420/600 with PEB - better than the DN420/600 in integer .ju .fi As with all new processor products, over time the performance improves as various enhancements are continually released. The fact that the PEB is fully microcoded means that these enhancements can be released with our regular major software releases and are automatically installed when the release update is performed. The intial microcode released with the DN320 will fully support all the functions that the PEB supports. In SR8 we will additionally support transcendental functions and so will substantially boost the performance (over the DN420/600 with PEB) for scientific programs that use such functions. The whetstone performance of the DN320 in single precision floating point is targeted to be about 330 whetstones by SR8. .nj .nf .bp .bd 1 COMPATIBILITY The following chart describes the way in which floating point is handled on each machine we have. Node Compiler Option ----------------------------------------------------------- DN300 program---> syslibs-----------cpu software libraries only DN320 program---> syslibs------hdw--cpu libraries use the hardware DN320 -PEB program------------>-----hdw--cpu inline code output from compiler DN420 program---> syslibs-----------cpu software libraries only DN420 program---> syslibs------PEB--cpu software libraries use the hardware DN420 -PEB program------------>-----PEB--cpu inline code output from compiler DN460/660 program---->syslib-hdw flt.pt-cpu library uses hardware but not optimally DN460/660 -XXX program-------->hdw flt.pt----cpu inline code output from compiler ------------------------------------------------------------ Conclusions: - since similar hardware is used for floating point on the 320 and the 420/600 PEB, code generated is compatible. - To get the most performance out of an existing program on a machine without a PEB, it should be compiled with the -PEB and -OPT options - code generated with the -PEB option is not compatible with the 460/660 since it uses different hardware .ju .fi ACCURACY Each machine uses better hardware in intermediate calculations and so is able to achieve better results. In virtually all the cases the customer will never see a difference in result, unless he cares about accuracy to the 12th decimal place. Our software libraries do have some characteristics which in some cases result in unexpected values. This is being fixed! The DN320 is supplied with the most accurate libraries (syslib.peb) available and will yield correct results in all cases. With SR8, we will release these algorithms for all nodes. This means that all nodes (with and without PEB, with all possible modes of compiling) will give the SAME answers in all cases. The 460 and 660 are using these algorithms already (ofcourse!). .nj .nf .bp .bd 1 PERIPHERALS The DN300 and the DN320 both offer two winchester disk options now . SMSD-34M $10,500 . SMSD-34M-1.2M $12,000 . SMSD-70M $12,800 . SMSD-70M-1.2M $14,300 - Only one drive can be attached to a DN3xx. - Ofcourse, the mouse and touchpad options are available when the node is ordered. .bd 1 CONFIGURATION The DN320 is only available in a 1.5Mbyte main memory size. The DN3xx can be configured diskless as well. The mother node may be any node or server with a local disk. Remember every standalone node must have a floppy with it and every network must have atleast one node that can be operated as a standalone node (i.e. atleast one node MUST have a floppy in any network). Factors to consider in configuring diskless node networks: - nature of application use: compute vs. editing - memory requirements : lots of virtual addressing=disk paging if it fits in main memory=little paging - nature of disk access: large vs. small frequent vs. occasional - amount of time all nodes that share one disk are in use simultaneously .bd 1 TECHNICAL DATA -------------- MEMORY - uses larger RAMs for putting all the 1.5Mb directly onto the processor board Floating Point - uses the same hardware as the current PEB but is layed out differently. Backplane - The DN3xx backplane has been redesigned to allow a full 5 boards to be mounted Power - The DN3xx now sport a larger 40A power supply to handle the needs of the floating point board Disks - Both 34 and 70M disks have the same technical specifications: 8" platters, 40ms seek time.