alpha versus intel performance?

[Danny Heap <danny@gibbs.med.utoronto.ca>]

Our lab purchased a DEC alpha lx164 recently.  We had seen benchmarks
(and heard comments) that suggested that it would outperform
similarly-clocked P-II processors, especially in floating point
operations.

In fact, our experience has been the reverse: our 350MHz P-IIs
outperform our 533MHz alpha by at least a factor of 2.  I am including
a short loop in C, with lots of trig functions (I assume that this
should showcase floating point operations), plus the output from our
DEC and Intel boxes.  I am also enclosing the output of `cat
/proc/cpuinfo` in case that is relevant.

Any suggestions?  Are there some optimizations for the alpha that are
(a) still being developed, or (b) that we can pass the compiler?

Thanks for any help.

Danny Heap
danny@gibbs.med.utoronto.ca
-----------------------
This is floating.c:
-----------------------
#include <math.h>

main(){
double trig1, trig2;
int ctr;

 for (ctr=0; ctr<1000000; ctr++){
   trig1 = sin(ctr);
   trig2 = asin(trig1);
   trig1 = cos(trig2);
   trig2 = acos(trig1);
 }
}

-----------------------
This is our DEC alpha:
-----------------------
<arrhenius>$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
cpu			: Alpha
cpu model		: EV56
cpu variation		: 0
cpu revision		: 0
cpu serial number	: Linux_is_Great!
system type		: EB164
system variation	: LX164
system revision		: 0
system serial number	: MILO-2.0.35-c5.
cycle frequency [Hz]	: 533194304 
timer frequency [Hz]	: 1024.00
page size [bytes]	: 8192
phys. address bits	: 40
max. addr. space #	: 127
BogoMIPS		: 530.57
kernel unaligned acc	: 0 (pc=0,va=0)
user unaligned acc	: 752 (pc=12004deb4,va=1205cf83f)
platform string		: N/A
---------------------
<arrhenius>$ time ./floating.alpha

real	0m4.903s
user	0m4.896s
sys	0m0.007s

-------------------
This is our intel machine:
-----------------------
<gibbs>$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
cpu		: 686
model		: 5
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
stepping	: 2
fdiv_bug	: no
hlt_bug		: no
f00f_bug	: no
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid		: yes
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 11 mtrr pge mca cmov 16 17 mmx 24
bogomips	: 348.16
------------------
`time ./floating.intel`
------------------
real	0m2.751s
user	0m2.510s
sys	0m0.000s
-----------------------------------------------------------------