Keep in mind that DESCHALL clients, both bitslice and
conventional, are a very specialized workload. In
particular, they rarely have to load data from main memory
since the working set typically fits within the L2 cache, if
not the on-chip cache. So DESCHALL tests your CPU (in a
limited way), but not much else. Also, 64-bit processors
have a big advantage in doing bitslice DESCHALL code over
"equivalent" 32-bit processors.
Anyone deciding on equipment purchases would be wise to
consider benchmarks more representative of their expected
typical workloads, unless of course you plan to run only
DESCHALL on your new machines. :)
- Darrell