mplevine@sgi.com (Marshall P. Levine) (07/22/89)
This message is to everyone who has ever insulted or supported the Amiga, especially to those who have recently publicized their views on the network. There are those of you who say, "The Amiga is outdated." There are also those of you who say, "The Amiga is the best computer on the market." I just want to try to present the facts objectively and bring some people back down to earth. Let's look at the computer market at about the time the Amiga 1000 was released. The three BIG microcomputer families available were: IBM PC family and compatibles, Apple ][ family and compatibles, and the Apple Mac family. IBM computers and most of the compatibles were solid, reliable machines. The newer machines were achieving higher speeds and larger memory capacities. EGA was the best graphics standard that IBM had to offer. Sound was still fairly crude. Macintosh computers were also gaining speed and memory. In fact, only their standard screen did not grow! Macs had high resolution and fairly good sound. They were not as solid nor as reliable as the IBM-type machines; software on the Mac did crash from time to time, albeit not often. But Mac users were not forced to learn MS-DOS. The Apple ][ family was constantly delivering yesterday's technology in different boxes. Things were fairly stable. Then, the Amiga was introduced. It is hard to tell whether the larger companies were afraid or not. I would find it hard to believe that anyone would take Commodore seriously. Weren't the VIC-20's selling at Toys-R-Us for under $20 at the time? But whether IBM, Apple, etc. were scared or not, they did begin to make changes. The Amiga was a radical new design, "Throw out all of the outdated technology of the giants and start from scratch, with TODAY's technology." Forget graphics and sound for a minute. The Amiga was not the fastest machine on the market. Apple was pushing (or about to push) 8 Mhz. IBM was on the 12Mhz frontier. And don't forget that the IBM could easily support math coprocessors. But nobody in this price range could come close to the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities. The blitter, the copper, Agnus, Denise, Portia, 8 megabytes capacity. Revolutionary. But the Amiga was not a reliable machine. Remember 1.1? How about 1.0? How many software failures did you have per day? Any business that took that Amiga seriously for any application that required the least bit of reliability was making a big mistake. But times have changed. Partly in response to the Amiga, the giants invaded the graphics market. IBM machines supported VGA and the Macintosh II was introduced. Even the Apple ][ family began to move again (remember the ][gs?). Be honest, VGA is damned good. So is the Mac ][ 24-bitplane graphics. A palette of 16.7 million colors is better than a palette of 4096 colors. 400 lines of non-interlaced vertical resolution is better than 400 lines of interlaced vertical resolution. How about processor speed? The IBM and compatibles family is in the 50Mhz range now (or is it 60?). Where is the Amiga? The vast majority of us are still running at 7.14Mhz. Now, technology from the higher markets is starting to invade the lower markets. Specifically, the cost of high-performance graphics workstations is falling to the level of high-end personal computers. I'll assume that most of you have at least heard of the Silicon Graphics "IRIS" line of graphics workstations. Until recently, IRIS computers were in the 6-digit price range. But now, there is the personal IRIS. A fully configured personal IRIS (96 bitplanes, 24 available for color in each window, 24 bit RGB color mode and 12 bit colormap mode available simultaneously, built-in z-buffering, built-in Gouraud shading, standard UNIX system V, etc...) costs around $20,000-$25,000. A minimally configured Personal IRIS can be obtained for $12,000 - less than a fully configured Mac ][, and MUCH faster than any Mac or IBM PC. So what's my point? Those of you who run around waving Commodore flags and yelling, "The Amiga is the best personal computer on the market" are forgetting a few things. The Amiga is not the fastest PC, not even close. The Amiga hasn't the best sound. It doesn't have the highest memory capacity. Nor does it have the best (quality/speed) graphics. But these are comparisons against the state of the art. How about user support? Commodore isn't exactly known for being a pillar of customer support! For a long time, their management was changing faster than modern technology. For a long time, it was impossible to talk with any real Amiga technicians or engineers. How about software? I still haven't seen a word processor on the Amiga that even comes close to the reliability and speed of many word processors on the Mac (I own Excellence! 1.14, Prowrite 5.0, Scribble, Textcraft, and a few PD ones). I still haven't seen any database software on the Amiga that comes close to the speed and reliability of database software on the IBM. How about postscript support? Show me some GOOD postscript support (I don't want to wait 10 minutes for the Amiga to produce a postscript file) and I'll talk about postscript. How many people are working on the MANX compiler? On Lattice? Not many. But things have gotten better. Much better. The 1.3 operating system is a vast improvement. I am seeing fewer software failures than ever. Compilers are improving. Software is gradually becoming more reliable. Commodore is more responsive than ever. The Amiga is not the fastest nor the best. It remains a fairly unique design: rebel in its time. The Amiga is the only PC that honestly supports multitasking, largely because most Amiga software was designed for multitasking. It still has many unique hardware capabilities. But that does not make it the best computer on the market. And for all of its problems, it is not the worst computer on the market. It is a machine for programmers; for people who like to play with those unique hardware capabilities. I wish that I had a fast, reliable word processor. I wish that I had a fast, reliable database manager. I wish that the Amiga ran at a competitive speed (33Mhz would be nice). I wish that we had 24 bitplane color. An AT bridgeboard should cost far less than an AT compatable computer. Amiga hardcards should not cost $900 when equivalent IBM hardcards cost $500. I do have a number of complaints. I also have lots of respect for the computer, its engineers, and you: the owners and programmers. The Amiga is a GOOD computer and the Amiga users on the network seem like dedicated users. I happen to own a 1000 and a loaded 2000. My point is that we should all try to keep our feet on the ground and see things the way they are. The Amiga is a good computer, but not the best. It has a long way to go. Let's see more speed, quality, and reliability. Let's see some logic in Commodore. Let's see the Amiga magazines and Commodore itself EARN our trust. They have a long way to go too. In the meantime, let's not fool ourselves. As long as we're honest about this computer, we have a chance of making things better. I hope we succeed. I humbly thank you for your time. -- Marshall Levine mplevine@sgi.com mplevine@phoenix.princeton.edu Advanced Systems Design, Silicon Graphics Inc. Department of Computer Science, Princeton University This article reflects only my opinions, and in no way represents those of my university or employer. I apologize for any inaccuracies. All standard disclaimers apply.
lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) (07/23/89)
In <38517@sgi.SGI.COM>, mplevine@sgi.com (Marshall P. Levine) writes: >This message is to everyone who has ever insulted or supported the Amiga, >especially to those who have recently publicized their views on the network. > ... >I just want to try to present the facts objectively and bring some people back >down to earth. Always nice to get facts. > Forget graphics and sound for a minute. The Amiga was not the fastest >machine on the market. Apple was pushing (or about to push) 8 Mhz. IBM was on >the 12Mhz frontier. No, it wasn't the fastest, but it came pretty close. Don't forget that clock speed comparisons are virtually meaningless when talking about dissimilar architectures. When comparing similar architectures, as might be the case when talking about the Mac, they have more meaning, but you must also take into account the OS, and what it has resposibility for. > Remember 1.1? How about 1.0? How many software failures did you have per >day? I remember the 1.0 upgrade, after which the machine got more stable, though still pretty fragile. 1.1 was a lot better, and my crashes (those that I was not responsible for) diminished to being measured in 'crashes per week', rather than 'crashes per day'. > Be honest, VGA is damned good. Damned good is a bit strong, but yes, it's good. > So is the Mac ][ 24-bitplane graphics. 24 bitplanes is damned good. As to whether '24 bitplane graphics' is damned good, rather depends on the OS and the hardware driving it. >A palette of 16.7 million colors is better than a palette of 4096 colors. In general terms, yes. A palette of 16.7 million colours is totally useless on a machine that can only display 2 of those colours at a time. I choose to use this example only to point out that the number of colours in the palette is only a small part of the picture. What can the machine do with those colours? How many can it display at once? How's the animation capability? > 400 lines of non-interlaced vertical resolution is better than 400 lines of >interlaced vertical resolution. I thought you were going to present facts. Ask anyone involved with video production which is better, and he will tell you that 400 lines non-interlaced is a waste of resources. THe first thing he will ask you is "How much will it cost me to convert that to PAL or NTSC?" > How about processor speed? The IBM and compatibles family is in the 50Mhz >range now (or is it 60?). Where is the Amiga? The vast majority of us are >still running at 7.14Mhz. It's in the 33 Mhz range, or less if you don't want to hack your accelerator board. 25 MHz is pretty much it for top end without hacking. Bear in mind though, that the same clock speeds on different architectures and different OS's do not imply the same throughput. I did hear about a 50 Mhz Intel part, but have yet to see one advertised at any price. As to the 'vast majority', I would ask you what the 'vast majority' of folks are running at in the IBMPCloneMac world. The vast majority, I can guarantee you, are NOT running at 50 MHz. Check out a Mac II sometime. You will see, if you keep an open mind, a lot of interesting features, but you will be near tears when you realize that Apple has once again managed to take a good, fast processor and cripple it with the OS. I won't even consider a single tasking computer for the appleation 'best'. > Now, technology from the higher markets is starting to invade the lower >markets. Specifically, the cost of high-performance graphics workstations is >falling to the level of high-end personal computers. That's true, but only if you are talking about Mac and IBM. > But now, there is the personal IRIS. A fully configured >personal IRIS (96 bitplanes, 24 available for color in each window, 24 bit >RGB color mode and 12 bit colormap mode available simultaneously, built-in >z-buffering, built-in Gouraud shading, standard UNIX system V, etc...) costs >around $20,000-$25,000. A minimally configured Personal IRIS can be obtained >for $12,000 - less than a fully configured Mac ][, and MUCH faster than any >Mac or IBM PC. Like I said, only if you are talking about Mac and IBM. That's about double a non-minimal (in fact a fairly loaded) Amiga. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the minimal Personal IRIS is devoid of just about everything mentioned in the $25,000 model, and needs all sorts of addon software/hardware to make it at all useful. As for prices on high-end workstations, that $12,000 will buy a lot more if you spend it on a SPARCStation, but that still doesn't put it into the 'home computer' classification. I probably have close to $6,000 invested in my 2000 setup, but that includes a lot of extras, like extra ram, 200 megs worth of hard drives, two HD controllers, a flickeFixer and Multisync monitor, etc. Add to that a few grand worth of software, and I have a machine that is better suited to what I do than the $12,000 IRIS. >So what's my point? Those of you who run around waving Commodore flags and >yelling, "The Amiga is the best personal computer on the market" are forgetting >a few things. The Amiga is not the fastest PC, not even close. The Amiga >hasn't the best sound. It doesn't have the highest memory capacity. Nor >does it have the best (quality/speed) graphics. Those of us who say that are saying it with perfectly valid reasons, every bit as valid as yours are. If _you_ choose to call a Personal IRIS a 'personal computer', then it will definitely colour your view of whether the Amiga is 'the best personal computer' or not. Show me a Personal IRIS that will do all the Amiga will do, and at a price comparable, and I will call them both the best personal computers available. > But these are comparisons against the state of the art. How about user support? Commodore isn't exactly known for being a pillar of customer support! For a long time, their management was changing faster than modern technology. What does this have to do with whether the Amiga is or is not the best personal computer on the market? That being said, let me also say that I have had no problems with customer support. Of course I don't sit back and wait for them to come to me and hand the support to me with an engraved invitation to call them. > For a long time, it was impossible to talk with any real Amiga technicians or >engineers. Bull! I have been speaking with Amiga techs and engineers since 1985. Are you perhaps waiting for them to come to your door and ask how things are going? > How about software? How about it? You want word processors, and I don't. Sounds pretty subjective to me. Bottom line here is that I still say, and will continue to say, as long as it's true by my standards, that the Amiga is the single best personal computer on the market. The factors I take into account may be far different than the ones you take into account, but that does not make them any less valid. You have not presented anything factual that makes me change my mind. You have presented subjective opinion that I can understand, but not necessarily agree with, given my experiences with the machine. You haven't 'brought everyone down to earth'. You have merely presented your view of the Amiga. It is not everyone's view. -larry "So what the hell are we going to do with a Sun?" - Darlene Phillips. - +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca or uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (07/25/89)
in article <38517@sgi.SGI.COM>, mplevine@sgi.com (Marshall P. Levine) says: > Keywords: reliability quality speed graphics sound compare > The three BIG microcomputer families available were: IBM PC family > and compatibles, Apple ][ family and compatibles, and the Apple Mac family. And the most popular computer family, in terms of units shipped, was still the C64/C128 family (IBM and compatibles have since outdistanced them considerably in terms of units sold, but they didn't do it overnight). > The IBM and compatibles family is in the 50Mhz range now (or is it 60?). > Where is the Amiga? The vast majority of us are still running at 7.14Mhz. The fastest IBM clones shipping are 33MHz machines (last I heard IBM's fastest was still 25MHz, though maybe they have a 33MHz like everyone else by now). The fastest Macs shipping are 15.8MHz machines. The fastest Amigas shipping are 14.3MHz machines. Both Macs and Amigas can currently be boosted to 33MHz with 3rd party add-in cards. Most of the existing IBM clones run at 4.77MHz, though I suspect 8MHz machines may soon overtake those older ones. Most of the existing Macs are the 7.8MHz machines, and as you mentioned, most of the Amigas currently in existence are 7.16MHz machines. The reasons are all the same -- not everyone needs a faster machine, and of those who believe they do, not everyone can afford one. So much for CPU technology. It's interesting to note that Amiga hard disks under FFS are considerably faster than those on any Mac, and only approached by the best IBM machine technology (though most of those machines, such as the ALR line, resort to custom hardware disk caching to achieve something close to the 850k/sec a decked out Amiga can achieve). > So what's my point? Those of you who run around waving Commodore flags and > yelling, "The Amiga is the best personal computer on the market" are forgetting > a few things. The Amiga is not the fastest PC, not even close. You're obviously a bit confused about "speed". It's not something you can measure strictly based on CPU clock rate. The Amiga architecture at 7.16MHz is significantly faster than the Mac 7.8MHz architectures. The reason for this is simple; the Amiga's custom chips offload a significant bit of work from the CPU. Add a DMA driven hard disk, and you get the same kind of speedup there. The original Macs went as far as to actually have to actually read the mouse quad clocks directly with the CPU. The SE and Mac II design does a bit better, but they're still bogging down the CPU enough to let an A2500 perform many operations faster than a Mac II. Even running the Mac OS via ReadySoft's A-Max, they tell me. > For a long time, it was impossible to talk with any real Amiga technicians > or engineers. Simply untrue. Amiga engineers have been available on public networks since there's been an Amiga. I don't think you can find such access to the same level of people working on any other computer line. > But that does not make it the best computer on the market. I don't think you could pick ANY computer you've mentioned and call it the best computer on the market. No single computer is going to fulfill the needs of all computer users equally well. I currently use my Amiga for everything except work-related schematic capture, circuit simulation, and PAL compiling. I have no complaints about word or document processing, etc.; for my needs they're perfectly adequate. Other folks won't be happy without DOC on an Apollo. I do PALs on a PC because the software isn't available for the Amiga. I could do schematic capture on an Amiga or a PC, but none of the packages I've tried even come close to NetEd on the Apollo, even though my office Amiga has more memory and runs faster than our Apollos. Simulations go faster on faster machines; that's what the VAX 8600 is for, though my Amiga could come close if there are several simulations going. Oops, the VAX is going down, gotta run... > -- Marshall Levine -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy Be careful what you wish for -- you just might get it
kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) (07/25/89)
I scratch my head and wonder where Mr. Levine was during the history of the
Amiga. Certainly not around the computer market.
When the Amiga was introduced, as he said, there was the Apple II and Mac
family, and IBM PC, XT, and the very new AT line. Although he doesn't
mention it, there was also the Commodore 64 line, which must be noticed for
the milions of machines sold in four years.
As Mr Levine points out, the norm was 16 color EGA and nothing between the
CPU and the CRT phosphor but a wire. The entire Apple line, in fact, made a
fetish of minimalist hardware. Sound on the PC was a square wave whose
frequency you could even adjust. On the Mac, a DAC, giving the possibility
of the most complex sound you wanted to code, with again nothing but software
between the CPU and the speaker.
If you wanted more, you could buy custom video boards with dot resolution up
to 1,024 x 768, and multicolor too. You could (and still can) buy multi-
channel DAC boards for the PC if you were serious about sound synthesis.
More CPU horsepower? Maybe a little. There was a 68000 board that connected
to the PC bus. A National 16032 board too. Oh, and don't forget the T400 (?)
transputer board with OCCAM. But these got into bucks.
Into this environment comes the Amiga. Blitter for video, coprocessors
for video and audio, four DACs and stereo. Something like 25 DMA channels
tightly woven together to obtain the maximum throughput under most kinds of
software load. And oh yes, multitasking. Useless little feature. One final
feature; you could have the whole system for under $2K. For the same bucks
you could have an IBMPC with 640K, one drive, and CGA but no monitor. An AT,
with roughly equivalent CPU horsepower was way off in the clouds at about
$6K. For many people, they might as well have wished for a Cray X-MP, since
the difference between $24M and $6K the same size as the difference between $6K
and what they could afford.
Times have changed and nowadays you can have an AT with hard disk and EGA
but no monitor for about $2K. The Amiga 2500 with 68020 is a bit more.
You can have a PC for $600, or an Amiga 500 which walks away from it in
every department. Amiga peripherals are price-competitive with PC add-ons,
although you have to pick from among only 10 vendors instead of 100. Same
with software. Amiga software is as good and as bad as PC software. The
difference is that AmigaDOS waves bye-bye before it dies, while the PC just
freezes.
Sure you can buy more CPU horsepower in the IBMPC world. I just saw a 35MHz
iAPX386 machine with VGA for a base price of $11,000. Wow! The fully
configured system tested by Byte cost (if memory serves) over $16K! And the
improved Cray Research Y-MP is down to $23 million. But what can you get
for a competitive price of, say $3K? Stereo audio with four analog channels?
Not really. 4096 simultaneous colors? No (VGA is 256 out of 11M). How
about multitasking? No...Well, you can run UNIX, or MINIX, but only if you
want to roll-your-own software. Maybe OS/2 in a couple more years. What
about CPU speed? Not clock rate in MHz, but how fast does it draw/calcu-
late/compile? Nah.
You can buy add-ons for better video for the Mac. It costs a grand. But
hay, anybody who'd buy a computer from Apple has already admitted he has too
much money and wants the problem fixed. I think the Mac II even has
reasonable audio. The price is almost competitive if you buy the stripped
down model (but then you can't add the video...).
Amiga software is cheaper. Partly this is the market. Less business users
own Amigas, so margins are lower on Amiga products. But partly it's the
software. IBM and Mac people havn't figured it out yet, but a real OS makes
it much easier to write programs that talk to each other, or run simultaneously.
Sure you can do a file download and edit simultaneously on a PC, who needs
multitasking? The answer is that ANY two (or three or four) things can
run concurrently on an Amiga, and nobody had to design all four programs
specifically to run with each other. There's no dark magic to writing programs
that multitask on the Amiga, so development costs are way lower. Is AmigaDOS
buggy? A little, sure. Not worse than other programs the same size, and better
than many. Just try installing a new TSR utility on a well accessorized
PC and tell me the OS is gonna take care of the resulting chaos.
So Mr. Levine, I guess I'm guilty as charged. I still think the Amiga is an
optimal mix of features and price. But it would serve you well to remember:
1. Clock frequency does not determine CPU horsepower. A 68000 at 7.16 MHz
is probably about on a par with a '286 at 10 or 12 MHz. A lot also
depends on the speed of the peripherals. Much as I've heard Amiga users
wail about the slowness of the floppy and filesystem, it still seems
pretty speedy compared to a PC. And I've never heard Amiga users complain
about video throughput even when they are comparing against MacII's.
2. You don't have to be the fastest to be the best. Not every customer
needs to do three dimensional solid modelling in real time. It is the
mix of features AND price that makes a difference. Compare any PC
against a Cray purely on the basis of CPU horsepower, and the PC will
lose every time.
3. It is the configuration purchased by most users that should be used
to judge a PC. Just because you can buy a 24-bitplane board for the
MacII does not mean more than a handfull will buy one.
All this aside, the Amiga may still never be the biggest-selling PC. People
don't trust its DOS compatibility. It has a bad, and mostly undeserved
reputation. And now, finally, you can buy a standard machine from Apple
with almost equivalent capabilities if you have lots of money. But the
Amiga is still a success. Over a milion units sold. Pulled Commodore out
of the jaws of corporate death. Supports an entire industry of sfotware and
hardware. And even after four years, it is still more than adequate for the
old and new tasks this writer puts it to.
Everybody's entitled to their own opinion, and now, I give you mine too.mjsagar@sandia.gov (9123 SAGARTZ, MATHIAS J.) (07/26/89)
In article <38517@sgi.sgi.com> mplevine@sgi.com (Marshal Levine)
gives us his perspective on the Amiga. He makes some very good points and
there is a lot to what he said but please allow me to offer a slightly
different viewpoint.
I've often heard the Amiga critisized and judged by standards
developed for other machines. It seems as though we must be the best
in every possible application to be credible. So what questions do
you ask from the deaf-mute world of MSDOS? How good are the
spreadsheets and databases? To be judged "faster" you must be the
quickest in every possible application and hardware configuration.
And from the Mac world we get questions about postscript output and
consistent user interface. Well maybe we need to rebut each of these
issues one by one, but what's the use. Marshal is right. For many
applications Amiga software is a generation or two behind the times.
Is that important? To some, perhaps many, it most certainly is. But
what about the other areas?
Marshal may casually say "Forget graphics and sound for a
minute" but there are those to whom these capabilities are important.
To him "400 lines of non-interlaced vertical resolution is better
than 400 lines of interlaced resolution," but has he talked to any
video guys lately? When I got my machine I ran the standard Byte
magazine multiplication benchmark in Basic (the way Byte did for
every machine they reviewed) and the Amiga beat the AT by a good
margin. Then just for the heck of it I tried a little routine that I
had written to find the roots of a transcendental equation
{sin(x)*log(x)-cos(x)*x**.35}. I ran the same basic code on my
machine and a stock IBM-AT and this time the Amiga was faster by more
than a factor to two. So who's faster? Give a coprossesser and the
right software the AT would have blown my doors off. Games have sold
more than a few Amigas and there the graphic and audio capabilities
make the system still very impressive. Some may not care but don't
try to debate my kids.
To Marshal with his particular needs and interests, what he
wrote makes a lot of sense. But the Amiga has capabilities in so
many areas that to judge it reasonably requires a very broad
perspective. Clearly the Amiga is not the "best" at everything and
with time some of its extraordinary features are looking less
exceptional. However, the operating system shows a lot of promise
and IFF is worth more than gold to some of us. While the big
software houses will probably never show much interst, the
exceptional capabilities and flexitility of the Amiga have attracted
more than our share of the best and the brightest.
Courage men! Grab you lances, there are still some windmills
out there!
Enough of this banter, now its time to get on with the real
topic of this message, a comparison of the computational speed of the
Cray XMP 416 and Iris workstations!.................................