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From: dillon@flea.best.net (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: 12 Mar 1997 13:16:59 -0800
Organization: BEST Internet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 139
Message-ID: <5g76gb$6c6@flea.best.net>
References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <331E7AFE.54DC@earthlink.net> <5g5bb9$ft$1@kayrad.ziplink.net> <5g6rr5$jgo@REX.RE.uokhsc.edu>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.sco.misc:36473 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:36924 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6298 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29050
:In article <5g6rr5$jgo@REX.RE.uokhsc.edu>,
:Benjamin Z. Goldsteen <benjamin-goldsteen@uokhsc.edu> wrote:
:>mi@rtfm.ziplink.net (Mikhail Teterin) writes:
:>
:>>Honorable fastbit@earthlink.net
:>> wrote on 06 Mar (in article <331E7AFE.54DC@earthlink.net>):
:>
:>>=Mikhail Teterin wrote:
:>
:>>>>
:>>>> Nope. PentiumPRO-200 with 512 cache, lots of RAM and disks, decent
:>>>> video will cost you 6-8K$ at most. Add $200 dollars for a commercial
:...
:>
:>>Nope, and I clearly indicate this in my previous post. Further, I found
:>>out, the machine we have is, actually even worse -- R4000 (not 4400) and
:>>running on 100Mhz. So, may be 5000 is really a great improvement over
:>>what I have.
:>
:>Based on PowerAnimator times posted by others, an O2 is about 2-3 faster
:>than the CPU your machine has.
:>
:>It isn't a good idea to make broad statements based on guesses (or in this
:>case, incorrect data).
:>
:>>=The O2 with 128MB simply FLIES; there is no comparison with 200Mhz PPro
:>>=boxes,
:...
:
:>>This is because of a good graphics, somthing SGI has been known for for
:>>a long time. Not the only reason one needs a good machine. How about
:>>compilation times?
:>
:>Of course, different machines are best suited to different taskes. For
:>example, an O2 would make a poor laptop. I wouldn't drop one on a
:>secretary's desk either (overkill at best).
:>
:>If you don't need graphics, an O2 is probably going to be more expensive
:>simply because it includes a lot of graphics hardware. A O200 makes a
:>better CPU server.
:>>And what about my other reasons against SGI, such as expensive hardware
:>>upgrades? "No-no you need an SGI aproved external CDROM"... Sun, BTW,
:>>wised up and made a PCI motherboard for Sparc (announced today, IMHO).
:>>The MB will fit ATX case...
:>
:>I've given up on hardware upgrades. They hardly ever seem worth it (for the
:>most part, buy what you need and replace when it is no longer is what you
:>need).
:>>And why does OS cost 3,000 dollars (I suppose, it comes installed on the
:>>new machines, but how about upgrades)?
:>
:>The OS is free is you maintain software support. SGI penalizes you pretty
:>hard if you don't.
:>--
:>Benjamin Z. Goldsteen
These are all goods comments. I'll inject some of my own... we
have ppro 200 boxes, SGI challenge L's, S's, and Indy's. I have
come to the following conclusions:
* From a raw horsepower perspective, a pentium pro 200 is roughly
equivalent to a MIPS R4400 @ 200 MHz. SGI boxes tend to have
more memory bandwidth, but Intel has proven the effectiveness
of a compact instruction set and the newer ppro chipsets are getting
close in terms of memory bandwidth. A ppro 200 can get away with
a 256K or 512K cache whereas the minimum you can get away with on
an R4400 is about a megabyte. I dunno re: R5000/R10K caches. The
main problem is that the 32 bit fixed instruction size with the MIPS
chip requires a larger instruction cache for the same performance
over a pentium. MIPS chips are generally much better at floating
point, but that is their only real advantage.
The only other traditional advantage that vendor supported boxes
have is ECC memory. But that's gone now too... A pentium pro 200
motherboard with the natoma (or better) chipset does ECC with parity
memory. This has made pentium pro boxes AS RELIABLE hardware-wise as
vendorized boxes (sun, sgi for the most part).
* While MIPS cpus are cheaper to make, the vendors currently shipping
boxes around them charge a premium that still makes Pentium boxes half
as expensive for the same capability. Intel is able to charge a
premium for pentium pro's and STILL have the final box be cheaper.
(and, p.s., I like MIPS chips a whole lot better then pentiums, so it's
hard for me to say this!).
* FreeBSD is lightyears ahead of IRIX, especially when you start
stressing the machine. This makes a huge difference. Add to that
the fact that SGI does not make their source code available, fixing
problems with IRIX becomes an exercise in futility. It took us
over a year and major blood boiling to get basic problems with both
IRIX 5.3 and 6.x fixed, and I have little confidence in any of our
SGI boxes even now. SGI also insisted on charging us insane prices
for every little thing, and insisted on charging us to essentially
beta test their software... we got so tired of it that several of
the machine placeouts we have done (replacing SGI's with pentium
boxes) has been SOLELY to avoid paying licencing fees to SGI.
* SGI may still be marginally ahead in graphics on their low end
machines (and are still way ahead on the high end machines), but
that is their only real advantage and they are facing stiff
competition from PC / PCI video card makers.
As a desktop environment, many people swear by SGI, but SGI's have
a lot of shared library and graphics support baggage that offsets
most of the advantages you get with their graphics hardware. For
what MOST people use these boxes for, FreeBSD/Pentium environments
are actually faster. Much faster. Netscape loads about five times
faster on my ppro 200 then on my Indy. xterm load ten times
as fast on my ppro 200 box. Admittedly, my Indy is only a 132 MHz
R4600, but it's still significant.
* Modern single-cpu boxes running modern operating systems (p.s. NT is
not considered a modern operating system) are more then sufficient
to handle modern day I/O loads. Our newsreader box, with 256MB
of ram and 250 reader processes and the disks going like hell,
have cpu's (pentium pro 200's) that are 80% idle. 80 fucking percent!
What this means is that a single-cpu platform can generally saturate
whatever I/O you throw at it and still have plenty of suds left over.
This trend has turned the larger minicomputers into expensive
deskweights for all but the most shared-memory-parallel-processing-
intensive applications.
This trend has also capped the curve on cpu speeds, at least for the
moment. Until disk and networking technology catches up, the difference
between a 200 MIPS cpu and a 400 MIPS cpu will be for naught.
Basically, we are moving just about everything we have onto rack mount
pentium pro platforms and running FreeBSD. I'll tell you, FreeBSD is
like a breath of fresh air compared to IRIX. Modern manual pages, modern
system commands, modern kernel core. I am much less stressed now then I
was 6 months ago.
-Matt