Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Well the rumor I heard.... Message-ID: <8039@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 29 Sep 89 14:56:01 GMT References: <6658@ingr.com> Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 83 in article <6658@ingr.com>, phil@ingr.com (Phil Johnson) says: > I do not think HP will buy the Amiga when they are putting out low-end > workstations like this. Especially when Commodore and their people do not > want to consider the Amiga moving into the personal workstation market, such > as Macs and AT. I still claim there's a difference between a Personal Computer and a Workstation, though it's true that distinction is blurring. For a large number of folks, a Personal Computer will serve the purpose of a Workstation, and for a small number the reverse is true. But there are differences, both is the way they're sold and the way they're designed. It currently looks something like this: ITEM PC Workstation CPU Standard CISC CISC for low end, RISC everywhere else CACHE None to 16k 64k-256k MEMORY 1-3 Wait States No Wait States COST $1-$10k $5k-$50k BOUGHT In computer stores From Manufacturer or OEM OS Proprietary UNIX Alternates available LAN Slow, optional Ethernet or faster, required DISPLAY 640x480x8 1280x1024 Monochome low end, 1280x1024x24 or so, high end $750 up to $20,000 SOFTWARE Large Variety Dedicated Applications $25-$500 $5,000 on up Pay for updates Maintence contract $1000/year ADMINISTRATION By User By Guru > The Amiga, with a little more imagination and a hell of alot more Commodore > backing, can easily move into the personal workstation market. The > engineering to do this is NOT that difficult. Alot of it depends on what you really consider "Workstation". When you say Workstation vs. PC, I think along the lines of this list I just made up off the top of my head; I'm thinking Engineering Workstation for something like EE CAD, Mechanical CAD, PC Board layout, Circuit Simulation, etc. That's what we have Workstations for here in West Chester. Of those four tasks, I have software that'll do each one of them on my Amiga. However, that software doesn't even come CLOSE to what's available on real Engineering Workstations. There's nothing like Mentor's NetEd on any Clone, Amiga, or Macintosh. A really souped up Clone can probably do a fair shot at mechanical CAD, but by the time you've added the extra stuff to make it do that reasonably (fast '386 with cache, large color display) you're well into the Workstation column, and you still have piss-poor disk I/O. No Clone, Mac, or Amiga can make much more than a baby PC Board or Simulation station, they're just too slow (we use SciCards workstations for PC layout, with the VAX as a routing engine, or Calay workstations which have their own dedicated hardware routing box, and we use VAX 8600 and Sun 4s for simulation, though we're looking at even faster solutions, as even these machines are bogged down with the job of routing). So, basically, even though to some degree PC and Workstations have overlapped (for instance, I've been using an '030 based Amiga for over 1.5 years that's considerably faster than any Apollo we have in house), there's no Amiga software that even comes close to the Mentor software we use for CAD. We've also looked at Clone software to replace the Mentor software, but nothing comes close. The one area where PCs have replaced Workstations around here has been for software development. Nearly every one of our software people, for both Amiga and UNIX software development, is running native on an Amiga. By choice, not mandate (there are Suns available). The Assemblers and the programming environment has been much better on the Amiga for some time for Amiga OS work, and '030 based Amiga so this job significantly faster than Sun 2s. Fortunately, an assembler or compiler is a relatively small and simple program with reasonably wide appeal, so there are good ones for the Amiga, and lots of competition to keep up. Here's an advantage of being a PC rather than a workstation. But I still see a difference. > Philip E. Johnson UUCP: usenet!ingr!b3!sys_7a!phil > MY words, VOICE: (205) 772-2497 > MY opinion! -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Too much of everything is just enough