fangchin@elaine53.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (05/24/91)
In article <1991May23.182626.7331@topaz.ucq.edu.au> enzerinkp@topaz.ucq.edu.au (Peter Enzerink, UCCQ, Australia.) writes: >In article <1991May18.135744.4956@anomaly.sbs.com>, mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes: >> leach@images.cs.und.ac.za writes: >> >>>I want to use a really fast machine, (much faster than my present one) >>>and would like know how to improve the speed of the 486-33Mhz. >> >> Buy a high-end ES9000. 230 mips. >> >> MD >> -- >> -- Michael P. Deignan / Since I *OWN* SBS.COM, >> -- Domain: mpd@anomaly.sbs.com / These Opinions Generally >> -- UUCP: ...!uunet!rayssd!anomaly!mpd / Represent The Opinions Of >> -- Telebit: +1 401 455 0347 / My Company... > >Buy half a dozen crays, put them, your IBM-PC and yourself in the nosecone >of a rocket, and away you go! > >(just kidding!) > Ah! Both are kind of unrealistic, you guys know it. A more practical choice is IBM's RISC 6000 line. The lowest end model 320 has got the following attributes: 13.5 Mega Flops (used to be 8.5 Mega Flops, already more than four times faster then SUN SPARC 1+ in number cruching, about 2.5 times faster then SUN Sparc 2, and about 6 times faster than a 487 33 Mhz) 35+ SPECs (about 35 mips if you like. Used to be like 28 Specs). 19" 1280x1024 256 color Sony FLAT screen (not your everyday curved screen trinitron) refreshed at 58Hz or so (Too bad!) and powered by a 50Mhz TI34010. 350 Megs SCSI II internal HD 1 3.5" 1.44 Meg floppy. AIX 3.1 (an IBM incarnation, or tempering, of UNIX) ***** Now the fun part ******* It also comes with a program called pcsim, a MSDOS simulator, which, hold you breath, runs Windows progs too. Imagine now you guys are happy with a 386. Now imagine your favorite programs run on this guy. Yes yes, I know, it's got software overhead. but.... ***** End of fun part ******** Size is about your everyday standard AT size, use MCA bus too. I manage 16 of them and 54 Sun Sparcs, 13 DEC3100s and I use one of these 320s to do almost everything. Speed is addictive, I tell you. (I wish I could use the 530 as my personal machine, but I got to leave it as server. Sigh...) This thing has a Nasty OS but it also has lots neafy things available. I am attracted to it by it's shear number cruching power. Nothing below $15000 beats this guy except certain HP 9000 series new comers. The price I quoted above is with educational discount. Guys, if you need to cruch numbers and have fast graphics, get this guy. A 486/487 combo just won't cut it sometimes. Mega Flops, Mega Flops, these are what keep the world going, not MIPS. You got to cruch numbers. The often claimed 21+ mips of 33Mhz 486 wont' do you any good when you talk about scientific computing. They are nice general purpose machines however and are good for that purpose. Unless Weitek and friends come up something that pushes MFLOPS to more then ten, then I guess they will be good number cruchers for small/medium jobs too. Regards, Chin Fang Mechanical Engineering Department Stanford University fangchin@leland.stanford.edu