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From: jlol@REMUS.EE.BYU.EDU (Jay Lawlor)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Snake
Message-ID: <9103230009.AA19858@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 23 Mar 91 00:08:26 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jlol@ee.byu.edu
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>>>>> On 22 Mar 91 13:58:08 GMT, davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) said:

> 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.

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

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

Bill>   Depending on the software support this machine may not currently be a
Bill> player in the second market. This has happened to IBM somewhat, although
Bill> they have the money to pay someone to port an application.
Bill> -- 
Bill> bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)

Well...  The one I tested (720, the low end desktop model) was running
HPUX, just like the 9000/800 series.  It ran binaries from our 835
without recompilation, although floating point seemed faster after
recompiling.  Times for the code I ran (floating point intensive) were
about the same as our RS/6000 540.  Very fast.

The X windows performance (using Motif window manager) was the best
I've seen on any machine, although X isn't exactly efficient for lots
of things.