Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) 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 . . .)) Message-ID: <2366@auspex.auspex.com> Date: 16 Aug 89 19:13:23 GMT References: <20519@adm.BRL.MIL> <36370@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <5665@ficc.uu.net> <5687@ficc.uu.net> <12035@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara Lines: 17 >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. The machine on my desk, a Sun-3/50, is not being used only for the display and keyboard functions - I do compiles on it all the time - and its frame buffer is a boring old array of bits. The 3/50 is generally considered a workstation, not a PC.... I don't even know that on all *color* workstations there's special hardware to move the 8-or-more-times-bigger pixels around. I think there exist graphics accelerators for PCs as well, so the presence or absence of a graphics accelerator is *not* what makes the difference between a PC and a workstation.