Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Sun != Open Archtecture Message-ID: Date: 12 Jan 91 16:12:51 GMT References: <2199@aber-cs.UUCP> <5177@auspex.auspex.com> Sender: cho@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 33 Nntp-Posting-Host: teachk In-reply-to: guy@auspex.auspex.com's message of 11 Jan 91 18:16:29 GMT On 11 Jan 91 18:16:29 GMT, guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) said: pcg> Actually (rumour mongering here) the 386/486 SUNs were killed off by SUN pcg> because they were technically competitive with the SPARC machines, guy> "Technically competitive" in what sense? The 25 MHz 386 machine, at guy> least on the Stanford integer benchmarks, was about as fast as the guy> Sun-3/2xx (25 MHz 68020 machine); it was faster on the Stanford guy> floating-point benchmarks than the 3/2xx on which I tried the guy> benchmarks, but the 3/2xx machine had only a 68881, not an FPA. The 386 machines had (slightly) better price/perfomance than the SUN 3s, and they sold fairly well, being also DOS compatible, and with "user-friendly" software, ... The real problem was the 25Mhz 486 vs. the original SparcStation; the performance roughly equivalent, with some edge for the 486 for certain things. Even worse, if you wanted to upgrade to a faster machine, you could either junk your Sun3 and buy a SparcStation, or instead just upgrade your SUN 386i to a SUN 486i (this upgrade was a well kept secret :-> and I think is no longer available). OOPS! Major problem for Sun marketdroids. Eventually the Sun [34]84i were doomed, whatever their technical merits; they were not Sun mainstream, and they used a microprocessor whose "value added" went into Intel's, not Sun's, bottom line. Sun had no reason to line Intel's pocket instead of their own. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk