mpierce@ewu.UUCP (Mathew Pierce) (03/16/91)
The network here at EWU has a serious problem: The old Sun 386i's can't keep up as servers, and the net gets seriously bogged down when the graphics people, autocad people, and C programming people all get on at the same time. It gets to the point where no new people can log on, even though there are machines available, due to the automounter on the server transforming into a babbling idiot. We have been testing a DEC 2100 for the past month, and the administrative people seem to like it, and are talking about getting one for a server. My question is: Can an Amiga 3000UX machine beat the DEC as a server? The instructor who originally got the lab going, a former owner of an Amiga which got stolen, is really set upon SPARC as workstations, and either the DEC or a SPARC as the server. I think that an A3000UX with lots of diskspace, would work great. If anyone has any numbers, like datatransfer rates or such could you either email me or post them here? Thanks, Matt Pierce
elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM (Eric Lee Green) (03/17/91)
Answer to the question asked in the title: If you're looking for a server, the A3000UX is preferable to, say, a '386 or '486 box (because of its fast I/O bus, faster even than MCA), but it can't hold a candle to one of the mid-to-high-end SPARC or MIPS (DecStation) products. The reason being that those expensive RISC machines simply have a whole lot more CPU power. Due to the way the TCP/IP software is currently implemented on Unix, it's quite easy for a server to get CPU-saturated... there's a whole lot of copying of data between various process's address spaces going on, all being done with the CPU. Not to mention upteen task switches to handle each packet. BTW, the high-end DecStation should do better than the SPARC. Another machine you ought to take a look at is the Data General Aviion (88000-based RISC machine running Unix)... a pretty hot box, even though it uses a RISC chip that's not as well supported as the SPARC or MIPS. A 3000UX is a nice machine... I might eventually get one, myself... but it's not the be-all and end-all of Unix boxes. -- Eric Lee Green (318) 984-1820 P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM uunet!mjbtn!raider!elgamy!elg