Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!chinet!alpha!ram
From: ram@alpha.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: new Gould NPL
Message-ID: <3810025@alpha.EECS.NWU.Edu>
Date: Wed, 1-Apr-87 23:18:33 EST
Article-I.D.: alpha.3810025
Posted: Wed Apr  1 23:18:33 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Apr-87 13:32:59 EST
References: <501@sw1e.UUCP>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
Lines: 54

In comp.arch ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) wrote: 
>In article <1805@pyramid.UUCP>, csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes:x> 
>>Ummm, I'm sure that Arete, Encore, Pyramid, and Sequent would be happy to tell
>>you about 12 MIPS superminicomputers with fast busses that sell for a lot less
>> than $400K for a fully configured system. Elxsi and Convex too, I think.

>Last time I checked (and I checked Pyrmaid recently) Arete, Pyramid, and
>Elxsi were not 12 MIPs.  The bus on the new Gould is much faster than
>every CPU you listed.  There are two big advantages of the Gould.  One,
>it achieves it's speed using a small number of processors which makes
>it more attractive to some of the number crunchers than it would seem to

    Elxsi has a 320 Mb bus and Encore 100Mb (I am pulling these numbers
    off my head- so allow some tolerances).  Sequent had a slower
    bus I think.  Sequent 21000 is rated at 21MIPS (21 NS32XXX).
    Also ELXSI OS is called EMBOS ( a message based OS) on which
    SYS V or BSD are selectable (rather than a hybrid - to which 
    some purists are against).  Also note that ELXSI is claimed
    to show a linear performance improvement with processor addition
    (John Sanguinetti: In COMPUTER of Aug'86).

>someone who is just going to dump 100 users on the machine (which is where
....
>

>Still, both this offering from Gould, and the recent offerings from DEC
>are very UNDERWELMING.  Gould's previous top of the line machine, the
>PN9000, was pushing 10 mips as it was.  This new processor isn't a very
>big jump for two or three years elapsed time.  It would seem to me that

     remember 3 yrs + ECL.

>we ought to be in the 20 mips range per processor now.  DEC is essentially
>pedelling the same old computer, clustered up in a form which pretends
>to be competing with the newer IBM processors.  The effect of this approach

     I guess when you grow big, marketing is where you indulge in
     rather than good performance oriented developments.

>has been seen in DEC processors over the years.  You end up paying close
>to N times as much (where N is the number of processors) and receive less
>than N times the performance increase.
>
>If only the big IBM's weren't such a bitch to talk to...
>
>-Ron
>----------



					      renu raman
					      ...ihnp4!nucsrl!ram

P.S Don't trust my mail/note headers. Trust the footers (really)