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From: philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Killer Micros and vectorized code
Message-ID: <1990Mar19.234839.13829@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 19 Mar 90 23:48:39 GMT
References: <00933EBB.E972FCA0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> <51771@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <100598@convex.convex.com>,<52661@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
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Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
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In article <00933EBB.E972FCA0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU>, sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU
(Doug Mohney) writes:

> If shared resources are such wonderful critters, how come multiuser Macs
> aren't popular? Or '386es? You could conceivably hang multiple terminals
> from a '386 or '486 box, but I haven't heard of people rushing out to do so.

Predictable response time...This is also (one of the reasons, anyway) why
Apple does not support pre-emptive multi-tasking. I'm using a 16Mbyte
DECstation 3100 and despite the faster processor, it doesn't compare with
a 68030 Mac on user interface reponsiveness. And the DECstation is hardly ever
used by other users. Moral of the story? A multi-tasking OS with virtual memory
etc. has its price. Of course, if you aren't doing much "interactive" stuff
(e.g., large-scale compiles or number crunching), the trade-offs are
different. I would go with a Mac as a user interface engine (scrap the
X-terminal idea), with a networked high-speed machine (or machines) to do the
number crunching, large-scale file system, database etc.

Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu