Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!augean!sibyl!ian
From: ian@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ (Ian Dall)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 386 machines are workstations?
Message-ID: <639@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ>
Date: 26 May 90 23:54:41 GMT
References: <634@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> <6326@scolex.sco.COM> <638@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> <3383@auspex.auspex.com>
Reply-To: ian@sibyl.OZ (Ian Dall)
Organization: Engineering, Uni of Adelaide, Australia
Lines: 50

In article <3383@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>>}So, you don't think that the Sun 386i is a workstation?  Why not?
>>
>>My only (limited) play on a Sun 386i gave me the impression it wasn't
>>very snappy.
>
>At least the one time I ran the Stanford benchmarks on a 386i and a
>3/280, the 386i (25 MhZ, I think, same as the 3/280's '020), the integer
>benchmarks were of competitive speed (at least until you turned on the
>"global" optimizer, which Sun's 68K compiler has and Sun's 386 compiler
>doesn't)

Raises an interesting point. Mightn't the 386 lack of (many) registers
limit the potential gains from a global optimiser?

>So the CPUs didn't seem too far off, from that one test.

Well, I have heard other people say the same (it benchmarks OK). I was
commenting on how it (very subjectively) "felt". Someone has said that
this was due to SunView being particularly slow. Be that as it may,
one might expect that the manufacturers (Sun) would have put some
effort into making their most visible piece of software reasonably
efficient on the 386i if they wanted to sell many 386i's.

>>Add to that supposedly user friendly system management
>>stuff Sun added for the 386 version of SunOs and I don't think I will
>>ever order one!
>
>The only thing that has to do with the 386 is that the 386 was stuck in
>there to grab PC users, as was a lot of the SNAP/plug-n-pray/etc. stuff;
>this doesn't mean that the x86 architecture was the direct cause of that
>stuff.

Fair point (that the x86 architecture is not to blame for the system
administration cruft), but it still contributes to the feeling that
this is an up jumped pc and not a serious machine.

Sure, a 386 machine will blow away a Sun 1, 2 and be competitive with
many Sun 3's on cpu benchmarks, but these are yesteryears
workstations.  I guess my definition (and the markets) of a
workstation has changed with the times. In my case it has changed to
always exclude the current x86 machine! I think it is the duty of
every knowledgable person to give Adam whatsisname's hand a little
nudge in the right direction when we can. If x86 machines had any
significant *advantages* I might have a harder decision, but if things
are much of a muchness I will got for elegance everytime. People that
design elegantly deserve encouragement!
-- 
Ian Dall     life (n). A sexually transmitted disease which afflicts
                       some people more severely than others.