Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!sdcsvax!ucsd!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!gatech!udel!udccvax1!anand
From: anand@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Anand Iyengar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Next and the competition
Message-ID: <2596@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU>
Date: 23 Dec 88 21:40:59 GMT
References: <2405@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <5725@polya.Stanford.EDU> <17911@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <315@belltec.UUCP>
Reply-To: anand@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Anand Iyengar)
Organization: The Lab Rats
Lines: 66

In article <315@belltec.UUCP> dar@belltec.UUCP (Dimitri Rotow) writes:
>I don't understand the viewpoint in this group that PC's only run DOS or
>OS/2.  Don't netfolks realize that half of the UNIX market these days 
>(by number of units) ships on '386 AT clones?  Why do you think 386 boxes
>have eaten up the low half of the UNIX market?  
...
>You know, they may not be elite, but it sounds like Intel processor AT bus
>machines have already won.
	MS-DOS compatibilty presently counts for a lot (and shows how strongly
the business environment respects IBM -- and now, Compaq).  Other reasonably
cheap UNIX boxes have existed for a while, but didn't sell as well.  Not
everybody is buying '386 machines to run UNIX.  Some people just want a
a faster DOS machine.  It can be argued that MS-DOS helped make many people
more ready for UNIX (MS-DOS == UNIX without the good parts).  

>What do you think '386's will do to the workstation market?
	Quite a bit I hope.  

>Just about anybody's plug in graphics board for UNIX and X will easily
>outperform the NeXT machine in resolution, "look and feel" display speed,
>or any other measure.  Slam a low-cost Maxtor or CDC at 380 MB into your
>low cost 25MHZ 80386 machine (not to mention the new 32 MHZ '386 machines
>or even '486 machines people are announcing) and you will eat the NeXT
>box alive in speed, quantity of *UNIX* software, low cost, and industry
>standardization.   Try a $2500 25MHZ 386 zero wait state machine with a
>$1200 380MB Maxtor (Advertised at Fry's at retail here in Fremont), and 
>a $2000 co-processor based 1660 x 1200  19" display, and *then* talk 
>about what a great "deal" the slow-poke NeXT machine is.
	I have a report at home which benchmarks a '386 and a 68020
(similar clock speeds) and finds performance close (each outperformed the
other in different parts of the test, but not by much (I think less than 20%,
back and forth)).  I recall reading a report from Motorola which says
that the 68030 can perform 50% better than than the 68020 (2 cycles/mem-access
vs. 3 for the 68020).  

	I've worked on 16 and 20 MHz 386 machines for about a year (Compaq's).
Both were quite fast until you went to the disk (granted, we only (<-?)
had 2.5M of memory, but many times I/O is unavoidable).  If the next
machine has widened this bottleneck, then it may do well.  

	Also note that the above prices are for the machine with out a real
operating system (quench the flames from MS-DOS users -- reality is in the
eyes of the beholder).  SCO Xenix is $1000 ($700 for a bare-bones system,
methinks);  you'll want the C-compiler to port X, etc.  Also the DSP, EtherNet,
D/A, A/D (all of varying usefulness, mind you), and software to drive
them add cost.  

>If Mac is coming on strong, that's great
>because it's a real product with a real future and it makes the 
>PC/workstation issue at least something of an interesting race.
	It *is* great because it's more competition in the race, but not
really that wonderful as new-&-improved-machine value.  The Mac OS still
doesn't have multitasking -- which the Amiga does (and has for quite a while 
I'm still waiting to see what Commodore makes of the 2500.  Could be
interesting).  The Mac could also afford to be faster.  

							Anand Iyengar.  
--
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