rstanton@portia.Stanford.EDU (Richard Stanton) (02/15/91)
I plan to purchase a new computer in the next few months. I want do decide among the various platforms available, and would appreciate any suggestions from people who have recently been through the same type of decision. My criteria, not necessarily in order of priority, with questions I have are: 1) Number crunching power - I run some very numerically intensive estimation programs that take, for example, up to 3 days of CPU time on a largish VAX here at Stanford. I want to be able to run these as fast as possible. How do high end PCs compare with e.g. Next and Sun machines in terms of FLOPS? 2) Memory availability. I program in C, and one problem on my AT compatible here is that I don't have enough memory to read in all my data for the estimation. Having more memory wouldn't help, as I'd always exceed the 640k maximum addressable by DOS without some tricks. Would any DOS machine (with a different compiler) be better, or do I definitely need another operating system 3) PC compatibility: I have several PC applications, e.g. Quattro Pro, PC Tools, that I'd like to have on the larger computer, too. I know there are PC emulator programs (boards too?) for many workstations. How well do these work? Those are the main criteria. I rather like the new Next machines, but am rather nervous about the limited amount of software available. Sun workstations seem to be more "standard", with correspondingly more software around, but they're expensive. Would a 3/486 machine with DOS running under UNIX be a feasible solution, and how would this compare in terms of price/performance with, say, a Nextstation? I'd be thinking of around 8 Mb of RAM, 300MB disk. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions. If anyone else is interested, let me know. I'll either send you a copy of any responses I get, or post a summary, depending on the level of interest. Thanks Richard Stanton pstanton@gsb-lira.stanford.edu
spero@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Spero Kouloures) (02/21/91)
> / hpindda:comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware / rstanton@portia.Stanford.EDU (Richard Stanton) / 11:54 pm Feb 14, 1991 / > I plan to purchase a new computer in the next few months. I want do decide > among the various platforms available, and would appreciate any suggestions > from people who have recently been through the same type of decision. > > My criteria, not necessarily in order of priority, with questions I have are: > > 1) Number crunching power - I run some very numerically intensive estimation > programs that take, for example, up to 3 days of CPU time on a largish VAX > here at Stanford. I want to be able to run these as fast as possible. How do > high end PCs compare with e.g. Next and Sun machines in terms of FLOPS? Most high-end PC's use an Intel 486 at 25 MHZ or a 386 at 33 MHZ. Workstations from Hewlett-Packard and Next use the 68030 or 68040 at various clock rates. In terms of raw horsepower the 68040 compares favorably with the 486 and the '030 and 386 are in the same ballpark. The '040 and 486 have built-in floating point units and will outperform the floating-point chips which must be added to 386 and '030 based systems. Sun uses the SPARC processor. While I have not seen current price lists I think that Sun's machines offer higher performance than even 486 or '040 systems, but are priced accordingly. The trade newspapers have been talking about a new processor from MIPS and new systems from HP which promise to dramatically alter existing price performance ratios. In the SF Chronicle a recent article (Feb. 7) cited new products expected shortly from HP in the 50+ MIP range starting at $12,000. > 2) Memory availability. I program in C, and one problem on my AT compatible > here is that I don't have enough memory to read in all my data for the > estimation. Having more memory wouldn't help, as I'd always exceed the 640k > maximum addressable by DOS without some tricks. Would any DOS machine (with > a different compiler) be better, or do I definitely need another operating > system Unix systems support virtual memory, and the 68k/risc processors generally have linear address spaces, with 32 bit addressing. In sum, with Unix you can forget about wasting time trying to circumvent this artificial barrier. > 3) PC compatibility: I have several PC applications, e.g. Quattro Pro, > PC Tools, that I'd like to have on the larger computer, too. I know > there are PC emulator programs (boards too?) for many workstations. How > well do these work? SoftPC is a DOS emulator available on many Unix systems. Compatability is good, however, performance is sometimes an issue. You may want to verify that the applications of interest to you work correctly and with reasonable speed before committing to purchase. There is not much need for PC Tools on a Unix system - vendor supplied administration utilities and standard unix tools can perform many of the same functions. > Those are the main criteria. I rather like the new Next machines, but am > rather nervous about the limited amount of software available. Sun > workstations seem to be more "standard", with correspondingly more > software around, but they're expensive. > > Would a 3/486 machine with DOS running under UNIX be a feasible solution, > and how would this compare in terms of price/performance with, say, a > Nextstation? I'd be thinking of around 8 Mb of RAM, 300MB disk. As stated above, a 486 will outperform a 386 + FP chip combination. Assuming that you want to run X Windows the graphics performance is also a MAJOR concern. You will definitely want a high resolution monitor (at least 1024 x 768) and very fast graphics card. > I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions. If anyone else is interested, let me > know. I'll either send you a copy of any responses I get, or post a summary, > depending on the level of interest. After a few years of developing code for Windows on 386 and 486 PC's I recently switched to an HP workstation. The User Interface is GREAT, the development environment GREAT and the performance GREAT. Switching back to DOS is not likely. The GUI provided by HP is based on OSF/Motif. Since most of the tools I need are available via an icon it has not been necessary to delve into the mysteries of Unix to become proficient and productive. > Thanks > > Richard Stanton > pstanton@gsb-lira.stanford.edu > ---------- Good Luck, Spero Koulouras NOTE: The views expressed above are my own and are not known to or in any way authorized by Hewlett-Packard.