TAYLOR%PLU@AMES-IO.ARPA.UUCP (03/24/87)
This is a summary of responses I received to a request for opinions and experience on the best Lisp Machine (Lispm) or AI workstation. I received techical summaries and internal reports from marketing reps of the following companies: Symbolics, TI and Integrated Solutions (AI workstations). Except for the Symbolics vs. Explorer and Symbolics vs. Xerox comparisons which appeared on the net last year, I received no extensive comparisons of two or more Lispms/WorkStations. I did get responses (positive & negative) from users with opinions (op) and/or experience (ex) on a particular machine. First a short summary, then some detailed comments. machine configuration type positive negative ----------------------- ---- -------- -------- Apple Macintosh II op 1 0 Hewlett-Packard 350 workstation op 2 0 HP-UX, integrated Lisp/Prolog Intel 3086 op 1 0 Golden Common Lisp LMI - 0 0 Sun 3/160, 2/160 diskless ex 3 0 Sun 3/280 server, 16-20 MB memory Symbolics - 0 0 Tektronix 4400 AI Work Station op 1 0 VAX AI Work Station ex 2 1/2 1 1/2 Xerox 1186 0 2 As you can see the response was not great. Now some detailed comments: ======================================================= From: Malcolm Slaney <spar!malcolm@decwrl.DEC.COM> Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research In article <8703010658.AA21849@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> you write: >11. A SUN without disks is useless. No, No, No, No, No. But you must have enough memory so you don't swap. I have a Sun3/160 on my desk with 16M of memory.....I NEVER PAGE or SWAP!!!!! If you do start paging then things lose real fast. Franz Lisp image are small and you can probably get by with less. I think the reason that memory is so critical to the current generation of Sun Lisp's is because of their swapping garbage collection. Every few minutes it must touch every page of your dynamic area. If you have to go to disk then chances are you will flush one of the pages you are currently using (isn't least recently used wonderful???). I have seen Lucid and Franz Common Lisp running anywhere between .5 and 4 times a Symbolics machine. Things are even faster with a Sun3/260. It is safe to say that Sun Lisps have caught up with Symbolics machines on speed. Now if they just had the environment.... [for program development? - wmt] P.S. I keep a Sun on my desk because that is my religion of choice...but whenever I have a real hairy problem debugging my lisp I run to the Symbolics machine. ======================================================= From: IN%"beane%bartok.DEC@decwrl.dec.com" 13-FEB-1987 07:06 I suppose somebody working at Digital can be expected to have a very positive opinion of the AI VAXstation, but I do, even so. I especially like the ability to run lots of completely independent processes, especially VMS ones doing mail, file transfer, access to other resources in the network without any LISP overhead. The editor is especially good, compared to other editors on the VAX. I much prefer it over EMACS, which I have stopped using. I've written several editor extensions (eg., menus for common commands) which I'll be glad to send you in hardcopy (to get the screen images). Oh, yeah, I've never used any other machine, so no comparison, just praise. ======================================================= From: IN%"@charon.mit.edu:meltsner@athena.mit.edu" 25-FEB-1987 19:09 We use Vaxstation II's + Vax LISP (Ultrix) here, and I'm fairly happy. But -- 1) Lucid's LISP is twice as fast on the same machine, given enough memory. 2) Ultrix LISP's don't yet support the window system, although the VMS ones do. 3) DEC memory and disks are notoriously over-priced. Consider buying a minimal system in a BA123 box, and getting an Emulex disk ($3000 MIT price for a 140 meg drive+ controller, installed) and a third-part memory board. Personally, I like the Vaxstation. The machine feels fairly solid, the software doesn't crash and everything install very easily. DEC service is expensive, but ubiquitous. In general, the Symbolics stuff is wonderful if you are willing to devote the guru time to keeping it running. DEC has an acceptable product which seems much easier to support. I have never managed a cluster of LISPM's, but I do manage our 5 machines in not much more than 3-4hours/week (I don't do backups....). ======================================================= From: "Christoph M. Hoffmann" <cmh@purdue.edu> We used the 1180 and 1186 Xerox dandilions at Cornell for a year or so in our research on solid modeling. We wern't too thrilled about them, because of the poor floating point handling and because they were very hard to learn. The trouble with floating point was software related: The compiler boxed everything, so it made a lot of work for the garbage collector. Also the fp precision turned out troublesome. The net effect was that we couldn't work with surfaces of (algebraic) degree 4 or higher, which excluded for example the torus. Here at Purdue we now use Symbolics machines, and so does Cornell. ======================================================= Well, after all that, what are we going to do? We now have a configuration of a Symbolics file server, serving: 4 - Symbolics 3640's 2 - Symbolics 3620's 1 - Symbolics 3670 2 - LMI 2+2 (3 lisp, 1 unix) 1 - Xerox 1186 1 - TI Explorer We also have a beta-test machine from Integrated Inference Machines and a VAX 780/VMS with Franz, Interlisp, OPS-5, MRS, ITP, etc. We are tentatively thinking of expanding our facility by adding: 3 - Xerox 1186's. Reasons : ease of learning, superior windowing, Common Loops, NoteCards, Xerox PARC innovation, inexpensive 1 - TI Explorers. Reasons : ease of learning, different yet similar to Symbolics, integrated Lisp/Prolog, source code 2 - Sun 3/260 diskless and Sun 3/260 server. Reasons: fast, NeWS, numeric speed, work station versatility, easy access to other languages It is worth noting that Symbolics, TI Explorer & Sun 3/260 are all in the same price ballpark. Xerox is considerably less, however it is not designed for the development of large systems. Hope that this is of benefit - Will P.S. Please send me your comments - thanks ==================================================================== Will Taylor - Sterling Software, MS 244-17, AI Research & Applications Branch NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 arpanet: taylor@ames-pluto.ARPA usenet: ..!ames!plu.decnet!taylor phone : (415)694-6525