Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekig5!wayneck From: wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne C Knapp) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: A different review of the A3000 Message-ID: <6210@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> Date: 9 May 90 18:49:12 GMT References: <135251@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or. Lines: 70 In article , eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: > In article <135251@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> admiral@m-5.Sun.COM (Michael Limprecht SUN Microsystems Mt. View Ca.) writes: > > - Calling it a workstation. When you do this you put this machine up > against some real heavy hitters (Sun, DEC, MIPS and to lesser extent, > Apple). This box has a nice price-point and that will help but not that > much. > > Come on!!! The A3000 out benches and outperforms ALL Sun-3's and > before, and is in the same performance ballpark as the SparcStation. > I would really have to do a lot of side-by-side benchmarking to > determine which is "faster," but the user percieved reality seems to > be close to no difference. > From what I can figure, an A3000 is pretty close to a Sun 3/80 which is about the same as a Next machine and a Mac IIxc (or something like that.). Well, when it comes to speed I heard many bitches in this group about how slow the Mac II is. It is well know that the Next machine gets pretty slow at times. The Sun 3/80 can't hold a candle to the SPARCstation 1. So I would have to agree that if you put UNIX on the A3000 you are going to have a real slug on your hands. I use the a SPARCstation 1 almost everyday. To say that any 68030 machine even the new Mac IIfx is as fast as a SPARC is clearly insane, or perhaps just very uninformed. IMHO, the SPARCstation 1 is the first computer I worked on that can run UNIX reasonably. We have two SPARCstations here that do more work than most mainframes I've seen. One of them is used to for cross-compiling and linking a lot. (Upto a couple hunderd compiles and links by five people a day.) The SPARC I use also is used by about 10 analog engineers to run spice. Some days I seen over 30 large spice jobs run on my SPARC. There is no way that the Sun 3/80 could do it. (We have one of those too.) Even when a SPICE job is running on my SPARCstation I have plenty of left over power to do anything I need. The A3000 is a very fast Amiga, but clearly by todays standards, it is a slug if you call it a workstation. I personally feel that it would simply be a waste of time to even bother to run UNIX on such a slow machine. Note the SPARCs we are using are over a year old and not even that fast by today's standards. Two years ago 68030 machines were okay in the speed department, but not today. However, this is not to degrade the A3000, as clearly Commodore isn't going head to head with Sun. There is a market for the A3000, and while it isn't a fantasic price for that level of power, it is a good price. Some people are likely to choose the A3000 over a Mac II or 386 PC. Surely that is the market that Commodore is after and not the workstation market. If they are after the workstation market they blew it, SPARCs are getting cheap! > Check out Friday's S.F. Chronicle. There's an article on Sun > releasing a new workstation in the $4-5K range (list). And it will be > I figure 4X's faster. This trend of high speed/low cost workstations > isn't going away. As a personal computer the A3000 is fast but as a > workstation it's a slug. > > Its nice that your company (Sun) is coming out with new products, > but what has that got to do with the definition of a workstation? And > if the Amiga 3000 at 6-7x an Amiga 2000 is a slug what is a Sun-3? I > prefer the response of the Amiga to that of any Sun, and I will often > flip screens (on my 2000) to do something else while waiting for a Sun > to finish some complex command like a directory listing... > > If Sun comes out with a faster SPARC for $4000, it will hurt some PC sales, some Mac sales and most likely the A3000 sales. The A3000 may be fast, but the SPARC is blazing. The Sun 3 line is old, the Sun 4 line is really some- thing. If you don't believe me, just look at Sun sales and profits. Now, if the 68040 were out in production, you might be talking a different story. Wayne Knapp