Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!mephisto!udel!udccvax1!mccalpin
From: mccalpin@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (John D Mccalpin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 386 machines are workstations? (Sun/386i)
Message-ID: <6537@vax1.acs.udel.EDU>
Date: 27 May 90 12:23:17 GMT
References: <136288@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu (John D Mccalpin)
Organization: College of Marine Studies, Univ. of Delaware
Lines: 22

In article <136288@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> david@eng.sun.com (You'll feel good about yourself!) writes:
>If you look at MIPS and memory bandwidth, a 386 class CPU driving a 1 Mb
>dumb frame buffer is pretty marginal.  You have to tune the window system
>code very carefully to get snappy interactive performance, and this was
>never done for SunView on the 386i.
>-- 
>David DiGiacomo, Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, CA  david@eng.sun.com

Two related comments:
(1) The NeXT machine is a pretty snappy UNIX(tm) box when running from
    a dumb terminal. Of course, its response at the console is well known
    as being less satisfying.
    I have not played much with the local 386i, but it is much quicker
    remotely than on the console.
(2) My primary machine has a 20 MHz R-3000 CPU --- about 17 VAX MIPS.
    I can use up to 60% of the cpu cycles just by moving the mouse
    quickly back and forth between two windows!  I certainly would not
    want to run that same software on a 3 MIPS cpu!
-- 
John D. McCalpin                               mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu
Assistant Professor                            mccalpin@delocn.udel.edu
College of Marine Studies, U. Del.             mccalpin@scri1.scri.fsu.edu