Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!esosun!ucsdhub!sdcsvax!ucbvax!pyrnj.UUCP!romain From: romain@pyrnj.UUCP (Romain Kang) Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid Subject: Re: Pyramid RAM Message-ID: <8704250414.AA08658@pyrnj.uucp> Date: Fri, 24-Apr-87 23:14:31 EDT Article-I.D.: pyrnj.8704250414.AA08658 Posted: Fri Apr 24 23:14:31 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 26-Apr-87 05:33:33 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 58 I guess someone from Pyramid's going to have to bite eventually. Might as well be me. I'm sorry this is a little long, but I don't have official, canned answers. As a lowly systems engineer out in field, I shouldn't pretend that I know what the strategic marketing motivations might be. However, the philosophy that I've always been presented has been one of building a real, working system for less, rather than just a cheaper CPU. In this respect, I must say that we have indeed been looking at our competition. Since info-pyramid is a now Usenet newsgroup as well as a mailing list, I don't feel it would be in good taste for me to broadcast competetive pricing figures, but I can mail them out to people who request them. To compare ourselves with the market leader in superminis, Digital Equipment, though, I've come up with a 1.8-1.9 price/performance advantage if you compare a couple of Pyramid 9820 configurations against equivalent VAX 8800 configurations. (And some small benchmarks I've seen indicate that we're extremely competitive performance-wise; anyone have an Ultrix 2.0 8700 or 8800 we can rent for a day for more thorough benchmarks?) The obvious conclusion might be that DEC 8800's are grossly overpriced, right? Well, since Digital is the market leader, Pyramid has to fight the perception that since we're much less expensive, we must be some newfangled product put together in a garage by college dropouts (oops, sorry Steve and Steve...) In light of this, I've often felt Pyramid systems are actually underpriced. But if you look beyond the price of a brand new system, I do feel $12000 is shocking, especially for the people who and bought their Pyramids early on and have remained loyal customers. I can only comment that that's a price that people pay for the rapid evolution of computers -- if things are advancing so fast (or receding, like memory prices), you pay to be at the bleeding edge. Witness, for example, the people with early versions of Apple's Macintosh, who are paying for their upgrades or otherwise getting stranded. And the companies that I'm mentioning, DEC and Apple, are GOOD companies. A word about Sun: They are not our competition. Sun and Pyramid are allies in the UNIX world. Note that we follow Sun standards like NFS, and that we've recently signed an OEM agreement with them. However, maybe it isn't quite fair to compare Sun memory with Pyramid memory; except for the Sun 3/2xx series, Sun uses parity-checked memory rather than ECC (which all Pyramid boards use). Nothing wrong with that for workstations with up to 8-12M of memory, but if you're up in the 64-128M range, my friends, the odds may be against you. Take heart, though. Pyramid has been adjusting prices. Just a year ago, a 4M memory board was almost $20000. Today, a 16M board is $40000. Who knows what the pricing people upstairs will dream up next? There's no way the prices could go up any further... PS. Watch for a press announcement Pyramid's going to make in a few weeks. -- Romain Kang, Pyramid Technology Corporation US Mail: 10 Woodbridge Center Drive, Woodbridge, NJ 07095 Ma Bell: (201) 750-2626 UUCPnet: {allegra,cmcl2,mirror,pyramid,rutgers}!pyrnj!romain