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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!europa.clark.net!mr.net!nntp.earthlink.net!usenet From: fastbit@earthlink.net 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: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 00:23:03 -0800 Organization: Earthlink Network, Inc. Lines: 35 Message-ID: <3327B967.1D68@earthlink.net> References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <331E7AFE.54DC@earthlink.net> <5g5bb9$ft$1@kayrad.ziplink.net> <5g6rr5$jgo@REX.RE.uokhsc.edu> <5g76gb$6c6@flea.best.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: cust67.max2.san-francisco.ca.ms.uu.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (Win16; I) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.sco.misc:36505 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:36956 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6301 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29067 Matt Dillon wrote: > .. > 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: > --- Snip --- Matt, What you are doing is comparing old generation SGI machines with the latest PPro boxes. The new R5000 and R10000 MIPS chips are considerably faster than the 4400 series both on integer and floating point performance at the same clock rate. More importantly, however, the architectural changes, such UMA on the O2 and cc-NUMA for Origin-200 and -2000 have tremendously increased the graphics processing and I/O bandwidth respectively compared to the old generation machines. The O2 is a very fast graphics machine; you can manipulate large, textured 3D objects and scenes in real time very smoothly -- something you simply cannot do on a $8K PPro or Mac box. Just go and see for your self how Photoshop or Power Animator runs on O2; that's all I can say. The Origin-200, on the other hand, is a very fast and cheap web server. Did you know that the entry price for that machine is only about $12K ? Have you Don't get me wrong: the PPro is a nice processor, but when you put in on a 133Mhz or even 266 Mhz PCI bus you are wasting more than half of its potential. You can't just compare raw CPU power and translate that into application speed-up. Regarding the OS: the 6.2 IRIX is much, much better than 5.3 in terms of stability and performance especially when you use XFS file systems. No, you can't get the source code for it. SGI is a for-profit company, not a university or research organization that gives away free source code. Can you name any for-profit company that does ?