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From: yar@cs.su.oz (Ray Loyzaga)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Single user vs. shared (was Re: Killer Micros and vectorized code)
Message-ID: <782@cluster.cs.su.oz>
Date: 20 Mar 90 05:49:47 GMT
References: <51771@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <100598@convex.convex.com> <52661@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1990Mar18.023523.4034@ultra.com> <52817@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1990Mar19.220617.26370@world.std.com>
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Reply-To: yar@cluster.cs.su.oz (Ray Loyzaga)
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
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Try answering this question, "What will be the most cost effective
solution for a company (given limited system administration resources)
which employs 10 skilled computer application users. 10 killer micros
of the ~10mips class costing $25k each or 1 or 2 killer RISCS of the
50-100Mip class with X-terminals?
The upfront costs will be very close, the killer micros
being slightly cheaper.
Eg, 2xRC6280 ~$300k, 10Xterms $30k (total $330k, 10 Sparc1 $250k).
Remember you need to have enough disk and memory (32Mb)!
It is no use comparing 10 X-terminals on a 10 mip machine as opposed
to 10 10 mips workstations.

I think I would rather be on the RC6280's, they would have the benefit
of centralized backups, large memories, easier admin, better ability
to share resources and conduct group work.
Upgrades to memory/disk benefit all users, all the technical staff can
work on the few grunt boxes and they will be using the same resources
as the users. If they have really nice workstations you will find that
they will not maintain other workstations to the same level.
The users (probably engineers or similar) can concentrate on the tasks
they are being paid for rather than learning how to administer a Unix
machine.
The same argument goes for a teaching environment where the user does not
need to control the console of a system to get their work done, all they
want is the limited graphics bandwidth that a windowing terminal provides.

When the RC6280's run out of steam, you do your shopping, and buy next years
version of somebodys super-scalar multi-cpu RISC box, and no-one
need know, the X-terms can stay (what is everyone going to do with
their sun3's now that sparcstations are all the rage?
They would make great X-terms.