karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) (05/09/90)
Sorry about losing the subject and references of the original article, but... The $5000 Sparcstation is still only a rumor at this point. To paraphrase Brooks, today's paper tiger can always beat today's real system, as long as you don't actually have to get any work done. Another thing about workstations is that secondary costs are greater than for PCs (PCs in this context includes Amigas). That is, you are going to pay more for memory, disk, software and service for a workstation. Granted, as volume increases in workstations, the price difference for peripherals and software should decline. SPARC chipsets like the new one from LSI Logic should simplify the Sparcstation clone equation, but with the seven-chip set costing $1300+ (per set) in thousand quantities, it is unlikely that a Sparcstation clone will approach the price of an A3000 in an equivalent configuration (memory and disk) for some time, especially once the A3000 has been out for a while and begins to be available substantially discounted from its current retail price. Don't forget, either, that an entry-level Amiga that is highly compatible with the A3000 is only $500. That gives us an economy of scale for software that no non-PC-volume workstation is ever likely to approach. -- -- uunet!sugar!karl -- Usenet access: (713) 438-5018
rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer) (05/10/90)
In article <5683@sugar.hackercorp.com> karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) writes: >Granted, as volume increases in workstations, the price difference for >peripherals and software should decline. SPARC chipsets like the new one >from LSI Logic should simplify the Sparcstation clone equation, but with the >seven-chip set costing $1300+ (per set) in thousand quantities, it is unlikely Remember that the SS chipset is said to be sampling at the $1300 price. One would expect a reasonable price progression on this stuff given that you have several manufacturers competing at production of the CPU, FPU, etc. >-- uunet!sugar!karl Rick Spanbauer Ameristar Technology