Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!ulysses!cjc From: cjc@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[mav]) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: What differentiates a Workstation from a PC (Re: What should GNU run on (was Re: what kinds of things . . .)) Summary: display resolution vs display speed Message-ID: <12035@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> Date: 15 Aug 89 20:08:59 GMT References: <20519@adm.BRL.MIL> <36370@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <5665@ficc.uu.net> <5687@ficc.uu.net> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Lines: 35 In article <5687@ficc.uu.net>, peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > In article <1528@convex.UUCP>, datri@concave.uucp (Anthony A. Datri) writes: > > Personally, I find it difficult to call something running MS-DOS with > > a fairly low-res screen a workstation. > > How about something runing UNIX and X-windows with a 1K by 1K display? > That's what you'll find in high-end PCs these days. I keep seeing references to graphics capabilities and to raw cpu power in this discussion, but I think people are overlooking one important aspect of the PC vs Workstations wars - the technology used to implement the display hardware. Most PC display adapter boards are simple memory maps between board hardware and the pixels on the screen. The main cpu is responsible for things such as bit-blitting, off-screen image copies (for things like fast popup menus), and color rectangle fills. In "workstations", either the graphics board can do many of these things itself (i.e. the Sun color framebuffers or the Silicon Graphics machines), or the workstation is only used for the display and keyboard functions (i.e. X server only workstations or the AT&T 630) and another machine is used for compute bound processing. In either of these events, the user level computation is seperated from the graphics level computation. A 25Mhz '386 AT&T box running X windows is slower than a Sun 3/60 running NeWS, yet the '386 has more raw cpu power. I believe this is due to the above mentioned differences in the way the graphics boards work. -- Name: Christopher J. Calabrese Brain loaned to: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ att!ulysses!cjc cjc@ulysses.att.com Obligatory Quote: ``Anyone who would tell you that would also try and sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.''