LKAY@ecs.umass.edu (06/12/90)
OK, net, bear with me 'cuz I'm sure this has been asked before..... I'm planning a workstation purchase soon and my choices are: SPARC, an IBM RS/6000, or one of DEC's new boxes. I need some advice as I'm not as on top of the market as I should be. I've got $15-20k to spend (I'll get an educational discount on this purchase), and I've got 'till August to make up my mind. My requirements in order of importance are: -> Speed, specifically FLOPS. The box will be used for research in numerical modeling in semiconductors. -> Good C and FORTRAN compilers (no bugs!) -> Easy, bugless Ethernetting. -> Short ship time. I've already heard stuff up on comp.sys.ibm.rt that some models of the RISC boxes already have 6-8 mo. queues. -> Availability/compatability of applications software, e.g. Framemaker or equiv, plotting packages, etc. -> Graphics capabilities (and quality of graphics tools). I don't need amazing speed for stuff like ray tracing, just a good plotting type environment. I will be using this as a standalone (possibly hanging one diskless machine on it at a future date). My personal inclination is to get a SPARC even though it's a little slower, due to the much higher quality of support and software I've experienced from Sun. I'm good at what I do but I'm not a Unix guru. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles. I'd appreciate any E-mail about this. As always, if there's enough interest, I'll post a summary to the net. Thanks in advance. Leonard Kay, KB2R UMass/Amherst (413)545-4762 lkay@ecs.umass.edu