robert@setting.weitek.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) (03/23/88)
In article <10018@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes: > As nearly as I can determine, workstations are used for graphics, >software development, word processing, reading news, and reading mail. >They are used to provide a windowing platform with NFS, and generally >the programs run are less than 1 min cpu, less than 2MB memory >(exculding the graphics display). > > I realize that some places may not offer mainframe power for large >problems, but I doubt that it's common to run really large stuff on a >workstation. I'm sure that if others disagree I'll see it here. Your mistake is assuming that things like graphics and word processing are simple, small applications. For example, WEITEK's "data sheet" for the WTL 3164 and WTL 3364 floating-point units is about 180 pages long. The Interleaf software we used to create the data sheet has an executable file that's nearly 2 MB long, and many more megabytes of fonts. The data sheet itself takes well over 2 MB of disk space, and when unpacked into its working form it overflows our 24 MB of swap space. Our Sun 3/50 workstations are inadequate for such a document: not enough MIPS, not enough disk space, not enough swap space, not enough main memory. But this is simply a large document in the mainstream of what workstations are used for: an interactive text/graphics application. Sure, if you look at a three-year-old program, it only requires the machine resources available three years ago, but that's not a valid test of future needs -- or even current needs. New programs, or frequently-updated old programs, are what you should watch. Interleaf's original product (OPS v. 1.0) ran perfectly well on a Sun II with 2 MB. The current product ("Full TPS" v. 3.0.18), REQUIRES 4 MB and should have 8 MB, and is almost intolerable on a Sun II with any amount of memory. -- Robert -- Robert Plamondon UUCP: {pyramid,cae780}!weitek!robert ARPA: "pyramid!weitek!robert"@decwrl.dec.COM "The paper IS the product"
jk3k+@andrew.cmu.edu (Joe Keane) (04/01/88)
In article <10018@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes: > As nearly as I can determine, workstations are used for graphics, >software development, word processing, reading news, and reading mail. >They are used to provide a windowing platform with NFS, and generally >the programs run are less than 1 min cpu, less than 2MB memory >(exculding the graphics display). > > I realize that some places may not offer mainframe power for large >problems, but I doubt that it's common to run really large stuff on a >workstation. I'm sure that if others disagree I'll see it here. Well here i am on a Sun-3 Andrew workstation, and what's the limiting factor? _Memory_, by a long shot over CPU speed. Let's see what we've got: window manager, 1M (blame the picture background); Console (monitor mail and much much more), 1M; Gnu-Emacs, 1M (2M if i've been editing); Messages (reading everything and writing this message), 2M. Resident sizes are about half that. These are my default programs; i haven't added in the real memory hogs (large rasters, large tree searches). Add in 1M for the kernel and run it on a 4M machine. It's not pretty (he says as the disk drive makes terrible noises), and it's not fast. Actually right now i'm cheating and running across four machines (fast as hell), but don't try this during peak hours. --Joe