norton@manta.NOSC.MIL (Scott Norton) (04/22/91)
The April 1991 issue of IEEE Spectrum has a section on commercial engineering workstations. A four-page "Representative sample of commercially available workstations" lists 44 workstations, including the Mac IIfx, Amiga 3000UX, DECstation Model 200CX, IBM Power Station 530, and Sun SparcStation. Prices range from $(US) 3200 for the TeleCAD Rocket Model 433I, a 14.5 MIPS 80486 VGA machine, to $109 000 - $239 000 for the Stardent 3000VS Visualization System, whic is a 128 MIPS, 160 SP MFLOPS machine based on the MIPS R3000. The Amiga 3000UX is characterized as a 5 MIPS, 68030/68882 Unix v.4 system with 4-16M of 30ns RAM; 105M SCSI, with 210M optional, hard drive; optional tape backup; CD-ROM not available from vendor; color, 14 inch 800 x 600 pixel display; Ethernet & RS-232 and Centronics I/O. The pric is given as $5499 - $6999. Other competitors in this price range include the Acer America 1170 (11+ MIPS 80486 at $4495), CompuAdd SS1 (12.5 MIPS, 1.4 MFLOPS Logic Sparkit 20 CPU at $5995 - $11 995), Solbourne S4000 (25.5 MIPS, 1.7 MFLOPS, Panasonic MN10501 engine, $8995 - $30 000), and Tatung TWS-5020, 12.5MIPS, 1.4 MFLOPS, LSI logic 64801, at $6995 - $8495). The Acer America 1170 is typical of a number of 80486 workstations in the $4000- $7000 range. I note the absence of the NeXT, eiter in the table or in the text. Flamers, please note that I am only summarizing the article here. I know that the Amiga can be juiced up to higher MIPS, and that the Blitter and Copper should count in processing effectiveness. But I think we, the Amiga advocates, should be quite happy at this mention in a publication as serious and widely-read as Spectrum. - LT Scott A. Norton, USN <norton@NOSC.MIL>