Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!deccrl!news.crl.dec.com!pa.dec.com!bacchus!mwm From: mwm@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: NeXT vs. Amiga ad infinitum. Message-ID: Date: 10 Dec 90 23:18:52 GMT References: <22056@well.sf.ca.us> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 33 In-Reply-To: yoo@well.sf.ca.us's message of 8 Dec 90 20:13:38 GMT In article <22056@well.sf.ca.us> yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) writes: True may schools are stuck in the Sun/Dec mindset, but NeXT will make inroads with its new machines. Iowa State purchased 68030 Decs for $3000 each. Sorry, but you misread the post, Yoo. ISU didn't by "68030 DECs"; it bought R2000 DECs. The poster claimed they were in the same performance range as a 25MHz 68030. While this may be true for some applications, it's not true in general. The R2000 at 12.5 MHz is somewhat below the low end of the quoted specs for the 68040 (I have as yet to see hard numbers from people actually using an '040; the quotes from Moto & others vary from sub-14MIPS to 24+MIPS), but faster than any '030 implementation you're ever liable to run into. Note that, unlike the Next/Amiga comparisons, you're comparing the _low_ end of the DEC line with the NeXT. The 2100 is the slowest DECStation sold. Options from there include the 3100 (16MHz R2000), and the 5000/200 (25 MHz R3000) with various graphics hacks. The R3000 @25MHz is at the _high_ end of the quoted specs for the '040 - and systems with that chip (second sourced, even) in them have been shipping for at least six months. The DECStations 5000/200 is almost fast enough to do animations as well as the Amiga. As a final note, I know of three projects to produce MIPS (Rx000 chip) architectures with 1-5 ns clock times. Any of those is going to be an order of magnitude faster than a 25MHz '040. This plus open systems pretty much spells the death of any CISC architechture in the workstation market.