Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!ken
From: ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: NeXT announcement (was Re: Atari Workstation)
Message-ID: <17516@gatech.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 88 05:48:19 GMT
References: <1449@wayback.UUCP> <6528@pyr.gatech.EDU> <10019@cup.portal.com> <9087@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: ken@gatech.UUCP (Ken Seefried iii)
Organization: School of Information and Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta
Lines: 37

In article <9087@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jafischer@spurge.waterloo.edu (Jonathan A. Fischer) writes:
>        Granted, the AWS offers multiprocessing AND an OS written for
>multiprocessing; 

The NeXT machine offers both of these.  The Mach OS on the NeXT box was designed
at CMU to support distributed heterogenious multiprocessing in a relatively 
transparent mannner.  Technically, it is possible to have NeXT, IBM-PC/RT, VAX
and Suns running and a network (running Mach) and have a unified environment.

By the same token, it is possible to put more NeXT cpus, Transputer arrays,
RISC processor boards, an 80386 processor or any combination in the three expansion
slots and have all of them comuping away...

Wether or not this functionality will be capitalized on is a matter of conjecture.
However, since many universities are very interested in distributed enviroments,
I suspect that it will be.

Multiprocessing is inherent..

>	           it also offers better graphics capabilities.  

Perhaps...I would not know.  

>								However,
>the NeXT machine offers some really nice things that the AWS doesn't, and
>I'm inclined to feel that, feature-for-feature, the NeXT machine comes
>out on top.
>--
>					-Jonathan Fischer

I would tend to agree.  For the price, the amount and power of hardware, coupled
with the software bundled with the machine, the price-performace-value ratio
leaves everyone an order of magnatude behind.

	ken seefried iii	...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs, 
	ken@gatech.edu		masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, unmvax,
	ccastks@gitvm1.bitnet	ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken