Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!umich!umeecs!msi-s0.msi.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!wytten
From: wytten@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Dale Wyttenbach)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Why we bought SLC's instead of Visuals or NCDs
Message-ID: <1990Jun7.144309.29740@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 7 Jun 90 14:43:09 GMT
Sender: wytten@cs.umn.edu (Dale Wyttenbach)
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept.
Lines: 33


> 
> Were there any other important issues that influenced your decision?

Our main reason for buying the SLC's probably falls under the 
versatility category.  If we bought X-terminals, all the X clients
would have to be run on some existing CS dept CPU - almost certainly
umn-cs since people prefer it.  umn-cs is a 6 processor Sequent S-27 
with 32MB of RAM and 140MB of swap space.  Right now, umn-cs runs
out of virtual memory when we get about 70 users on, and the active
processes include say 20 xterms, 10 emacs, 10 xloads, 10 xbiffs,
etc.  We need to educate users to run X clients on their local
workstation instead of umn-cs.  For example, if everyone used
'xterm -e rlogin umn-cs' instead of 'rcmd umn-cs xterm' it would
help a lot.  Obviously people can't run clients locally if they have
an X-terminal on their desk.

One of the most basic resources we provide is CPU cycles.  For about
the same price as either an NCD-19 or a Visual-19, you can add a lot of
CPU cycles to your pool by buying an SLC instead.  Who knows how these
CPU cycles will be used 3 years from now, but they'll be available.

Comparing xbench results for the SLC vs. the NCD-19, the SLC won some
battles and lost others.  However, the NCD server is highly optimized,
and Xsun is not.  If and when Xsun is improved, I suspect that the
SLC would clobber existing X-terminals.

dale

 - 
 Dale Wyttenbach		     |		...rutgers!umn-cs!wytten
 wytten@cs.umn.edu		     |		   wytten@umnacvx.bitnet
Computer Science Department Systems Staff--University of Minnesota, Minneapolis