kyw@cs.purdue.EDU (Ko-Yang Wang) (12/27/88)
Hi, A friend of mine asked some questions that I would like to solicit your opinions. ** I apologized if you think this is a wrong group to ask the questions. ** ** Please reply by e-mail (vendor responds are welcome but please provide ** ** some details to justify your claims). ** Here is the background: Someone is going to start a small (but very good) private engineering school that has only five engineering departments (EE, CS, ME, IE, CHE) in Taiwan. The school is planned to grow into a institution that has 100~150 professors and about 300 graduate students in four or five years. This will be a research (graduate school) oriented institution since there will be at most 600 undergraduate students (< 30 per department per year). There will be a computing center that supports the computing needs of both teaching and research. Several million (US) dollars budget in computing equipment is planned, more is possible (if justified by needs). The major question is : what kinds of computing equipment to get? I understand that teaching and research have different computing requirement. Some of the research equipment will be purchased by individual projects, but the computing center should provide adequate computing power for general researches. More explicitly, I have the following questions: (I understand some of these questions are debatable. Let me know your opinions Replies for just one (or more) of the questions are all right, other concerns or comments are also welcome.) 1. What type of computers are more suitable for teaching and research needs? 2. Is distributed systems (workstations?) better or big centralized computers better? How about hybrid systems? 3. Is it better to have the departments handle their own computing need or is it more efficient to let the computing center handle both teaching and research computing loads? 4. What are the best machines to get in terms of throughput and performance/price ratio? How many users can the machines support? Any data about the performance of the machines that you suggest? Price? (Parallel computers are under considerations also. In particular, I think sequent balance 21000 is a good system to add, are there any other systems that have similar or better price/performance ratio?) 5. How much money should be allocated for software purchase? What kinds of software to get? 7. How about supporting equipment (terminals, terminal multiplexors, ethernets, printers, etc). How much money (in percentage) should be spent on these equipment? 8. Your estimation of costs of the equipment that you suggested. It is your chance to help to spend several million dollars :-) Your response will be appreciated. Merry Christmas to Everybody. And Happy New Year! Best Regards, Ko-Yang Wang ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ko-Yang Wang | kyw@cs.purdue.edu | ----- ------ ___`___ Department of Computer Sciences | | __|__ [] | --- Purdue University | | | | --- West Lafayette, IN 47907 | (317)494-0813 |`-------, \| [===] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Ko-Yang Wang | kyw@cs.purdue.edu | ----- ------ ___`___ Department of Computer Sciences | | __|__ [] | --- Purdue University | | | | --- West Lafayette, IN 47907 | (317)494-0813 |`-------, \| [===]