Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!rlin
From: rlin@cs.ubc.ca (Robert Lin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: NextStep available on PS/2 and RS/6000 NOW!
Message-ID: <8604@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jul 90 07:15:35 GMT
Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca
Organization: Objective Software Engineering Corp.
Lines: 25

I talked to an IBM insider this morning, and learned that IBM has put
out NextStep for PS/2 and RS/6000 officially, and that it is priced
at $500.

My source said performance on PS/2 is quite sluggish, for a couple
of reasons:

- The 80387 FPU is quite slow compred to Motorola's, and Postscript
  really needs good FPU support;
- AIX interprocess communications is not as fast as MACH's, which means
  messages sent from applications to the DPS slows down; and
- The hardware architecture isn't as well optimized for thoroughput
  as NeXT, which really shows up whenever I/O occurs... modem,
  disk drive, ethernet, etc.

Finally, the only display currently supported is the Matrox MegaPel
video board/monitor, which is quite expensive. All together, it makes
the PS/2 version quite expensive to put together, and not as fast
as the NeXT at that.

Interestingly enough, a 80486 system running NextStep is about as fast
as a NeXT. While these are fairly broad statements and are more
concerned with screen I/O than with raw MIPS or what-not, it does
show how the dual ported video RAM and a good system architecture
can go a long ways to help a mediocre CPU.