Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Snake
Message-ID: <3284@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 22 Mar 91 13:58:08 GMT
References: <69465@brunix.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 21

In article <69465@brunix.UUCP> cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
| In today's New York Times, there is an article about the new HP Snake line.
| The story places the low-end Snake (720?) at 57 MIPS, 55 Specmarks for
| $12,000.

  Assuming that this is what it sounds like, the next question is
software. Does it run UNIX, and have X, and have {name it} application
software? 

  The workstation market can be divided into people who have source for
everything they run and are buying raw MIPS, and people who run
applications like Maxima, Interleaf, troff, etc, who are not in the
market for hardware which doesn't support their application.

  Depending on the software support this machine may not currently be a
player in the second market. This has happened to IBM somewhat, although
they have the money to pay someone to port an application.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
        "Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode,
         but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency"