Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site unisoft.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amd70!dual!unisoft!phil From: phil@unisoft.UUCP (Phil Ronzone) Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Re: IBM vs VAX/unix Message-ID: <223@unisoft.UUCP> Date: Mon, 5-Mar-84 17:11:58 EST Article-I.D.: unisoft.223 Posted: Mon Mar 5 17:11:58 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 9-Mar-84 01:11:22 EST References: <571@pucc-h>, <6683@cornell.UUCP> Organization: UniSoft Corp., Berkeley Lines: 26 >> Microcomputers CAN replace most uses of VAXen. Not all, of course, and >> I wouldn't want to replace a VAX with any number of PCs, but there are >> much more cost effective ways to provide VAX equivalent power than with >> a VAX. 68000 Unix systems are surprisingly powerful. I judge the Callan >> Unistar-100 to be about one fourth the speed of a VAX11/780 for long >> compiles. It is about 60% of a VAX for non-floating point computation >> intensive tasks. A 68000 with 2 or 4 Meg of memory is probably the cheapest >> way to run Lisp. >> ... >> The major advantage that microcomputers have is that each user can have his >> own machine. Every VAX user knows the "it's two in the afternoon and the >> load factor is too high" blues. A VAX may beat a Callan at 7 AM, but a >> Callan will get my job done faster at 3 PM. While one nroff job saturates >> a VAX, it takes 10 nroff jobs to saturate 10 microcomputers. (And the jobs >> will probably finish two to four times as quickly.) >> ... >> A major problem with connecting lots of microcomputers together is that it >> requires lots of unwritten software..... Just to let y'all know -- here at UniSoft (makers of UniPlus+, our port of V7, SIII, and SV, to the Callan, among many others) we have BNET running on UniPlus+. To offload our VAX'en from their ``2:00 blues'', we ship everything from C compiles to troffs over the Ethernet to one of many 68000 boxes. Rather than add VAX'es, we add 68000 boxes. It is a really economical way to go.