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From: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Sun's Competitive Strategy (Was: Re: P1754
Message-ID: <00940AD9.94880420@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU>
Date: 4 Dec 90 15:16:56 GMT
References: <1990Nov16.225515.494@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Nov25.194404.3376@dircon.uucp> <1635@unix386.Convergent.COM> <1990Dec2.014554.3491@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <2760@cirrusl.UUCP>,<2764@cirrusl.UUCP>
Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (C-News)
Reply-To: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney)
Organization: The U. of MD, CP, CAD lab
Lines: 44

In article <2764@cirrusl.UUCP>, dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes:

>A number of people have protested in email and in follow-up postings.
>Some of them implicitly assumed that any discussion of MIPS must be
>about a Sun running UNIX.  This is not so.
>
>The state-of-the-art today in single-user machines is anywhere from 10
>to 30 MIPS depending upon your budget.  People buying 80x86-based
>systems are mostly buying machines running 80286 and 80386 CPUs at 16
>MHz or higher. 

Euh, dunno how to tell you this, but a 16Mhz '386 BARELY clocks 1 MIPS. I think
the 20 MHz maybe clocks 4. Maybe. So the castrated-16, er '386SX barely runs at
1-2 MIPS (VERY generous assumption). That's for $2K.
                                    
If you are talking '486 speeds, on a sunny day, with all things in harmony in
the Universe, and Intel not tinkering with the benchmarks (;-), you probably
can pull 12-16 MIPS. Average mileage may vary depending on amount of cache
available and clock speed. Of course, you are talking $3500-4000, with
actual vendor configurations averaging $5K. 

>The Apple Classic *does not* cost $750 in any usable
>configuration.  (And educational discounts only benefit a small
>minority of users.)
>Add a decent amount of mass storage and other
>peripherals and you can easily pay $2,000 or more.  There's just no
>comparison with equivalent 80386SX-based systems.

So add a hard disk and an extra MB of RAM, and you now have a usable
configure for $1250, or thereabouts. That's street price, not educational. And
you haven't spent $750. 
**************************************

This all begs the question of where we can all purchase 28-30 MIPS workstations
at $750. Or $2,000. TODAY. 

Three years from now, when the '486 & and the '040 "trickle down" to us
unwashed masses, you may claim that the paltry 8MHz 68000 is "irrelevant."
However, today is a far different story, and I would once again like to have
some of the profits from these irrelevant machines show up in my bank account. 
                          %%%%% Signature v1.1 %%%%%
 Doug Mohney, Operations Manager, CAD Lab/ME, Univ. of Maryland College Park
*    Why do VMS system managers get more sleep and less ulcers than their  *
*        UNIX(TM) counterparts, despite the sophistication of UNIX?        *


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