ballen@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Bruce Allen) (08/02/90)
I apologize for posting this here, but it is the only newsgroup that I participate in, and the subject should be of interest to other Sun users. My friendly IBM salesman has been trying to convince me to order an entry-level (model 320) RS6000 machine. In my experience, these are about 3 times as fast as SparcStations on floating-point intensive code. I would be more interested if I thought that they could actually deliver a system before next year. He claims that delivery times are 6-8 weeks. I don't find this credible. Can anyone relate their experiences? Bruce Allen
chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) (08/03/90)
Bruce Allen writes: > My friendly IBM salesman has been trying to convince me to order an > entry-level (model 320) RS6000 machine. In my experience, these are about > 3 times as fast as SparcStations on floating-point intensive code. I > would be more interested if I thought that they could actually deliver a > system before next year. He claims that delivery times are 6-8 weeks. I > don't find this credible. Can anyone relate their experiences? Don't believe him. IBM has publicly stated that all shipments through the end of 1990 have been allocated, and the earliest delivery dates for new orders are January, 1991. If he can get one in 6-8 weeks, it must be some demo machine they are getting rid of. The IBM sales force is still undertrained to sell these things. They really don't have a handle yet on the workstation market. One story has an IBM rep at a trade show telling people the 6000 has a CGA display adapter in it. If you are unsure of your knowledge about workstation products, don't count on the IBM guy to educate you properly. He's still learning, too. By the way, make sure you test drive one of these things before you buy. Make no mistake: they are screamers on floating point stuff. But the window system and OS are absolutely pathetic. They might call it Unix, but it doesn't resemble any Unix I've ever seen. Everything is different, from the way you mount file systems to the error messages. Get some hard experience before you commit to this machine. My recommendation: buy a 320, small disk, and an Ethernet board. Hang it on your net as a compute server. Telnet in, run that big job, and get out. Don't let anyone actually try to use it as a personal machine. Other good questions for your IBM salesperson: which OS will they be supporting in a year or so: OSF/1, AIX 3, or some variant? Which window system: Motif, SAA, or Presentation Manager? When can you expect third party memory SIMMs with a price comparable to third party memory for Suns? My favorite: ask them how many instructions per cycle their CPU executes. If they say "five" (and they will), ask him how often you can expect to actually get five per cycle. If they say anything but "hardly ever", ask to talk to another sales rep. Chuck Musciano ARPA : chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com Harris Corporation Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck PO Box 37, MS 3A/1912 AT&T : (407) 727-6131 Melbourne, FL 32902 FAX : (407) 729-2537 I'm glad you asked, son. Being popular is the most important thing in the world. -- Homer Simpson
dwatts@uunet.uu.net (Dan Watts) (08/03/90)
In article <1990Aug2.002712.17044@rice.edu> ballen@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Bruce Allen) writes: >My friendly IBM salesman has been trying to convince me to order an >entry-level (model 320) RS6000 machine. .... > He claims that delivery times are 6-8 weeks. I >don't find this credible. Can anyone relate their experiences? His quote sounds right. I'm expecting ours to ship on 5-Sep-90 and we placed the order a few weeks ago. That'll make it about 7 weeks or so. However, this only applies to the first computer on order. All other systems are placed at the end of the ship queue and could take a very long time to get delivered. My sales rep won't even commit to a date for our 2'nd system :-( # CompuServe: >INTERNET:uunet.UU.NET!ki!dwatts Dan Watts # # UUCP : ...!uunet!ki!dwatts Ki Research, Inc. #
grunwald@ncar.ucar.edu (08/07/90)
>>>>> On 3 Aug 90 11:55:10 GMT, chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) said:
CM> By the way, make sure you test drive one of these things before you buy.
CM> Make no mistake: they are screamers on floating point stuff. But the
CM> window system and OS are absolutely pathetic. They might call it Unix,
CM> but it doesn't resemble any Unix I've ever seen. Everything is different,
CM> from the way you mount file systems to the error messages. Get some hard
CM> experience before you commit to this machine.
CM> My recommendation: buy a 320, small disk, and an Ethernet board. Hang it
CM> on your net as a compute server. Telnet in, run that big job, and get
CM> out. Don't let anyone actually try to use it as a personal machine.
More of the ``If it ain't SunOS, it's BS'' worldview. We have a loaner
RS/6000 running AIX 3.1 (rev something). It screams, more or less. The
window system is X/Motif with Display Postscript. It's not SunView, but
then again, that's considered a feature by some. It's been compatible with
all the X applications I've tried, *and it's got very fast graphics*. Only
the DECstation has had better/faster graphics to date.
As for ``it's unlike any other unix'' -- true, but then again, I mounted
an NFS file system using ``/etc/mount foobar:/foobar/users /foobar/users''
and it worked just fine. YP worked fine (except it didn't understand the
options in our auto.master table). 'ifconfig' works fine. I installed
'amd' and after fixing my mistakes, it works fine. And some of the feature
are very nice, e.g., the ``info explorer'' on line manuals, the journaled
file systems, making `fsck' unneeded, the 128-byte granularity memory
locks, etc etc.
What's disturbing is the performance of the 6000. Running ``xmountain''
(an X demo that makes fractal/brownian mountains) takes about 0.4 seconds
on my DECstation-3100, but 1.6 seconds on the RS/6000. A discrete event
simulation that a colleague tried took 2x longer on the RS/6000 than the
DECstation-3100 (the 20Mhz? DS3100 was about == to a 33Mhz Series 5E
Solbourne cpu).
However, it *did* get 7.5DP Mflops on linpack without optimization. The
RS6000 look 16seconds w/o opt and the DS3100 takes 19seconds w/-O3
optimization. With optimization, the RS6000 took 3 seconds, but I think it
optimized something away (although 35DP Mflops *is* possible).
So, I'd concurr: borrow one & test your application. It might do well, but
then again....I'd expected better integer performance. For my money, I'll
stick with a MIPS R2000/R3000 CPU at the moment.
Dirk Grunwald -- Univ. of Colorado at Boulder (grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu)
(grunwald@boulder.colorado.edu)