feldman@umd5.umd.edu (Mark Feldman) (02/19/90)
Let's not start another machine vs. machine holy war in this group. Different problems require different solutions. The RS/6000 series provides some heavy duty crunching, color, and a NextStep development platform (for additional $$$, I believe). It does not come with the bundled applications, it does not have sound, and the logo isn't as colorful. Everyone keeps going back to speed as a benchamrk, and currently the NeXT is slow for a "workstation" class machine. Undoubtedly, a machine based on the 68040 will be much faster. Faster than the RS/6000? I don't know, nor do I care. I want to know if it will be fast enough to do what I want it to do. For many applications, including mine, more bang for the buck could be achieved by adding a few more 68030/68882 CPU sets (w/DSP, if possible) to the current NeXT, after all, Mach supports multuprocessing. Since the new RS/6000 series is RISC and speaks native X, I would say that IBMs POWERstations and POWERservers (Performance Optimized With Enhanced RISC -- really!) are in more direct competition with DECstations, SPARCstations, and the like than with NeXT. The one sure thing is that my old Apple ][ plus is really falling behind:-) Mark
UH2@psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer) (02/20/90)
In article <6151@umd5.umd.edu>, feldman@umd5.umd.edu (Mark Feldman) says: >Everyone keeps going back to speed as a benchamrk, and currently the NeXT is >slow for a "workstation" class machine. Undoubtedly, a machine based on the You're right, and "they" are wrong. A couple of years ago, the trade rag Infor Week had a Mac v. Msdos shoot out. They created a typical business-ish project that required some spreadsheet work, some pie charts, retrieval of data from a database, and the creation of a typical major project proposal. Groups of two or three worked for a couple of days to produce results. There were several teams. Their "benchmark" was how good the final production was, since time spent was about equal. Mac won, handily. I hope they do it again, but include NeXT, and create a project where being tied to a network, using email, and Mathematica are good for some tasks. I hope they wait til Wingz is available. >68040 will be much faster. Faster than the RS/6000? I don't know, nor do I >care. I want to know if it will be fast enough to do what I want it to do. >For many applications, including mine, more bang for the buck could be >achieved by adding a few more 68030/68882 CPU sets (w/DSP, if possible) to >the current NeXT, after all, Mach supports multuprocessing. >Since the new RS/6000 series is RISC and speaks native X, I would say that >IBMs POWERstations and POWERservers (Performance Optimized With Enhanced >RISC -- really!) are in more direct competition with DECstations, >SPARCstations, and the like than with NeXT. >The one sure thing is that my old Apple ][ plus is really falling behind:-) > Mark