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From: hal@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Aaron Harsh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: A3000UX - Born to run UNIX SVR4
Message-ID: <1529@pdxgate.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 91 05:08:44 GMT
References: <1512@pdxgate.UUCP> <1991Feb9.032953.14709@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1519@pdxgate.UUCP> <1991Feb9.063711.17280@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
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Reply-To: hal@eecs.UUCP (Aaron Harsh)
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In article <1991Feb9.063711.17280@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> rjc@geech.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes:
>  Ok... The $10,000 question is: Once the Amiga has an 040, what advantage
>has the NeXT got in speed? If the Amiga is running AmigaDos, none. If Unix,
>probably not much.

  How much will an A3000 + '040 cost?  The price for a 3000 is already the
same as a NeXTstation.  Looking through my copy of AmigaWorld until I find
an '030 expansion card..  the first one I find costs $1428.  About an extra
40% over the cost of the computer.  What makes you think an '040 board is
going to cost substantially less than this?

>>  As CPU speed increases and display overhead stays the same, amount of
>>time spent on display aproaches 0.
>  Yes, but the 040 is only 3 times as fast as the 030. Your example
>of CPU->infinity, time->0 only works for orders of magnitude speed
>improvements. The 040 ISN"T a quantum leap above the 030 like NeXT users
>believe.

  On the old NeXTs, the Workspace Manager took up about 20% of the CPU's
time.  20%/3 = ~7%.  Getting a lot closer to 0.

>>Someone posted some benchmarks
>>comparing A3000 and NeXTCube (030 model) a while ago.(I think that was
>>in the pre-advocacy days).  The NeXT was a little faster than the Amiga.
>  Yea, by about 100 drystones, and I believe that was a 25mhz Amiga vs
>a 28mhz NeXT. Drystones aren't a very accurate benchmark anyway.

  Dhrystones aren't accurate, but they're reproducible.  Machines with
the same processor should have the same Dhrystone counting ability.  The
point was, an '030 NeXT _wasn't_ slower than an '030 Amiga.  (NeXT never
made a 28mhz machine.  Actually the only 28mhz chip I've ever heard of
was on the Amiga board I mentioned above.  Very odd.)

>>  You probably haven't played with one of the new NeXTs.  They're speeded
>>up a lot.  You can even format disks while you're downloading a file :-)
>  I can do this and more on my 7mhz A500.

  I was referring to the stories about why Mac users should get an Amiga.

>>  Try doing raytracing in any reasonable amount of time on an Amiga.  Try
>>designing a functional graphical interface to one of your programs in a
>>half hour on an Amiga.
>  Hogwash, I'd put LightSpeed3d w/25mhz 040 Amiga up against ANY NeXT
>ray-tracer. What makes you believe an 040 NeXT will run faster than an 
>040 Amiga? If the Clock speeds and CPU's are the same, performance
>will be about the same. The 3000 has an extremely efficient bus design.
>You act as if the NeXT will be an order of magnitude faster than the
>Amiga. The difference between the two in a ray-tracing competition
>will be measured in seconds, not minutes. Besides that, AmigaDOS
>has FAR less CPU overhead than Unix does. So I have every reason to believe
>an A3000 w/040 will run faster than a NeXT. My A500 already proves that
>by updating the screen faster than a 386 or NeXT does.
>
>As far as designing an interface for a program. I can design an
>interface for an entire application in less than 10 minutes with
>PowerWindows. Gadtools under 2.0 will probably give the same advantages.
>
>And as for uses of the Amiga's expansion slots, besides the stuff you
>listed, how about:
>1) Multiple serial port cards

  How about a device that hooks up over the SCSI port?  NeXT's have one of
them.

>2) Graphic card enhancements

  Yep.  Amigas have better graphics.  If you're going to do video or
play games, get an Amiga.

>3) Extra processors for multiprocessing

  Does AmigaDOS really have support for multiprocessing?  I'm impressed.

>4) An I/O sampling board

  DSP input port.

>5) Fax Card

  Plenty of fax modems for the NeXT.  Fax support in the OS, too.

>6) Different network cards (besides Ethernet)

  3279Coax adapter box (to connect to IBM mainframes) hooks up over the
SCSI port.  GatorBox hooks NeXT's up to an AppleTalk network over the
ethernet port.  Novell support is being added by someone (wish I could
remember who, yes I know Novell is ethernet)

>7) Adding different types of drives/devices besides SCSI

  SCSI488/N interface hooks up to SCSI and adds IEEE 488 interface.  I
can't think of anything beside hard drives that hooks up to MFM/RLL/ESDI
anyway.

>8) >32mb of ram (who knows, some people may need more in the future)

  Well, if you really think you're going to need >32mb RAM in the near
future (at least before your next computer purchase), you shouldn't buy
a NeXT.  Good point.

>9) DSP's, like the newer faster DSP's, or i860's/88000's

  1)  I haven't seen any i860/m88000/m96002 boards for the Amiga.  Have you?
  2)  No one will write software that uses them if they're non-standard.

>Answer me this question, how does a slab owner upgrade his CPU for a faster
>version/bigger cache/68050? Does the Slab has a CPU card slot, or
>will he have to SELL the slab and buy another configuration?

  How does an Amiga owner plan to keep up with advances in processor
technology if he commits himself to a 680x0 machine?  NeXT was very
embarrassed having an '030 machine while everyone else had SPARC's and MIPS
computers.  E-mail from NeXT states specifically that they will not fall
behind in processor technology again.  (They're already settling on non-
Motorla designs).  It will be a hell of a lot harder for a series like
the Amiga with it's processor specific (at least compard to UNIX) OS to be
switched over to a completely different processor.  With the NeXT, it'll
be much easier.
  Even if 680x0 processing ability did keep up with RISC and VLIW, how
much would it cost to bring a A2000 up to an A3000?  You have to add a
'030 accelerator; a video board to stop the flicker; and a SCSI port (2000s
don't have them, do they?).  You've said it before: a processor alone doesn't
make a system.  Bringing an Amiga up to the functionality of the next model
will be pretty expensive.
  As to what I plan to do:  I don't think I'll be using my NeXT forever
(or even 5 years).  I'll probably use it as a file server for a faster
machine, or for tasks I expect to take a long time.  (It'll hook up over
ethernet to the new machine I get).

Aaron Harsh
hal@eecs.cs.pdx.edu