From owner-colug@bopper.wcbe.org Sat Mar 20 10:22:52 1999 From: Rob Funk <rfunk@wks.uts.ohio-state.edu> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 22:31:21 -0500 To: colug@bopper.wcbe.org Subject: Re: [COLUG] New development that may of interest References: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9903181550230.3388-100000@apple.fruit> <36F174BE.E817808A@infinet.com> <36F1A666.324E42D5@cms.cendant.com> In-Reply-To: <36F1A666.324E42D5@cms.cendant.com>; from Shawn Hooton on Fri, Mar 19, 1999 at 01:20:38AM +0000 On the two architectures in one box topic: PowerMacs (have) had 486 chips in them for years, allowing you to boot into either DOS/Windows or MacOS. However, unlike Sun's card (which I think they used to sell as an SBus card for the older generation of Suns), I don't think you could have both running simultanously. But I don't think Sun's card is exactly revolutionary. On Sun hardware and software (my job): Shawn Hooton wrote: > The Xserver for Solaris sucks >Even with a Creator UPA framebuffer) and Solaris is a pig with memory. Why do you say the X server sucks? Are you sure it isn't a scheduling issue? (you can fix 2.6 and 7 to use a more responsive scheduling algorithm, email me off-list for details.) One thing I like about the Sun X server is that it includes Display PostScript. Software written to take advantage of it has a single graphics model for display and printing, making things more WYSIWYG. Of course, since there's no mature widespread free version of DPS yet, only some Sun and 3rd party commercial apps take advantage of it. >I also became tired of porting a lot of apps that were "Written on Linux >and >probably won't work on anything else". Yeah, but I mostly blame the developers for not bothering to write portable software. It's quite easy to write software that works on both Solaris and Linux. I think those two are more similar than any other two Unices not based on BSD. > I have ran Ultrapenguin 1.1.9 on >one of the Ultra 10s and I have to say that I have never used a faster >Hardware/OS combination! Too bad my job pretty much requires me to run Solaris on my Ultra10/Creator3D. Linux is relegated to the 486 in the machine room. For now. ;-) >Ultra 5 >M64 video (2MB! ONLY up to 24bpp@800x600) And Ultra 10 Creator? Mine is running at much higher res than that. >4.x GB EIDE disk (SLOW and no cache!!!) Most "serious" people add an ultra/wide scsi card. Many of them never access the EIDE drive after that. >270Mhz CPU (Slow, relative to what's out there) (I believe the current U5's are 300MHz.) So does that mean that a 486-100 is faster than a Pentium-90? I don't think so. You CAN'T compare raw MHz between UltraSPARC and Pentium, or indeed any two processors of different designs. Different processor designs are "differently efficient". A somewhat better comparison is MIPS (million instructions per second), but that (like all benchmarks) depends on the instruction mix. Usually you can find an integer and a floating point benchmark number, and you need to compare both. I believe you'll find that SPARCs easily beat Pentiums at floating point, and are often faster at integer than higher-clocked Pentiums. I think SPARC chips also have more registers than Intel chips (and designs copied from them), making more efficient assembly code possible. Plus, the Sun architecture has much better I/O performance than the PC architecture. >32x CDROM (Goldstar, yuck!) Well, since it's ATAPI you can replace it with your favorite brand of cdrom drive without a problem. >$2,500 If you happen to be buying it for use in an educational institution, there's a nice discount. That's what made my Ultra 10 so attractive for us. >Home Built PC >8MB AGP G200 Matrox (Extemely fast) >4.2 GB IBM UltraStor (Ultrawide and very fast) >Adaptec 2940 SCSI Controller >AMD K2-350Mhz (Ahh much better) >32x Toshiba SCSI CDROM (Fast and you can spool cdrom audio data) >128MB RAM >Linux (Redhat, Debian, Slackware, Suse, whatever) > >Much cheaper than $2,500 Anything homebuilt is going to be cheaper than the equivalent put together by a vendor, especially when the vendor's product is as physically stable and solid and reliable as Sun machines are. I say your AMD chip is no better than the 300 MHz UltraSPARC, and your Matrox is no better than the Creator3D in my box. My Ultra 10 has 128MB RAM, and a Sun combo SCSI/Ethernet card.