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