Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!sharkey!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!uxc!garcon!garcon.cso.uiuc.edu!grunwald From: grunwald@flute.cs.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: 88K vs. MIPS vs. SPARC vs. 386 Message-ID: Date: 1 May 89 18:17:36 GMT Sender: news@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu Distribution: comp Organization: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Lines: 19 I would like to solicit comments concerning certain properties of available workstations. I'm interested in architectures with a low cost for light-weight thread context switching, e.g., for process oriented D.E.S. Of the existing processors, it appears that the 88K is most suitable, since it doesn't use (1) register windows or (2) a huge register file, both of which cause a lot of problems when doing a *lot* of context switching. However, other processors have good attributes, namely they're available and cheap. Does anyone, other than Data General, make an 88K box *available now* that runs a reasonable UNIX (i.e. should be able to run Berkelyish code). Has anyone had experience with the DG Maverick? -- Dirk Grunwald Univ. of Illinois grunwald@flute.cs.uiuc.edu