Quoting "Paul G. Allen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
My 200 MHz 21264 system was faster than my PIII 800MHz system. (I still
have that system with Linux installed on it, but as for performance, it
was eclipsed by Intel and AMD systems years ago.) Yes, the price tag was
a bit higher (OK, more than a bit. ;) ) When it came to number
crunching, nothing beat an Alpha, which made them really nice for
graphics (which is what I worked on at DIGITAL - graphics workstations
using Alpha and PPC running UNIX and NT).
We had a pretty decent sized alpha box in one of our data centers for
something like 6 months once. It was a loaner from, I think DEC
directly perhaps, and was a full rack only partly populated. It had
Tru64 on it (later I think I recall putting linux on it for some
testing, but it's been a few years). They were hoping to make gains
in the EDA space with Alpha. Problem was, there was only 1 tool
available on it at the time. It was amazingly fast. So fast that
when we worked with an engineer to do some test runs, she thought the
program had crashed, because the prompt came back too fast. It hadn't
it was done that fast and comparing the results showed it was ok.
Other then those few tests, the box sat completely idle until they
came and took it.
Our purchases are driven by the engineers needs, which are driven by
tools. We'd (begrudgingly) convert to an all windows shop if all the
tools moved there and we had no real choice.
For ages there, Solaris on SPARC was king. Now Linux (RHEL and SLES)
on x86_64 is dominating. Could change again, but I doubt it'll be
anytime soon.
Oh, and yes, the "Solaris is the only good OS" types have pressured
the ISVs a ton to go Sol x86 but the ISVs don't seem to want to. I
think they figure they put enough into moving to Linux already and
don't want to bother since it's the same arch but would still be
another platform for them to have to support. Heck, getting them to
add SLES was hard enough... and we've been pushing for LSB really.
Of course these are the geniuses that use path names like amd64 to
mean rhel on x86_64, and suse64 to mean sles on x86_64 (yes they don't
just build one compatible version for both... grrr).
I still recall the saying "Alpha. The fastest processor nobody's ever
heard of."
I still recall the KPLUG meeting several years back when someone (was
it you?) brought an alpha box in... the demo of a fractal generation
program that was smooth as silk, vs a slideshow on someone else's
current top of the line P3 was impressive.
--
Mike Marion-Unix/Linux Admin-http://www.miguelito.org
Of course, all mission critical synergistically enhanced corporate
package data
mining and report generating suites need upgrade paths to facilitate corporate
executive migrations. -- stolen from a /. post 4/26/99
--
[email protected]
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