🚀 go-pugleaf

Here's something that should clear up this debate once and for all...

I used to think PC magazine was the most reliable. But these days, when
you are older and more wary, you can still find some soft spots.

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Subject: Why workstations are better than PC's.
Status: RO


I offer the following possibly incorrect justifications for buying a 
workstation over a PC.  (I assume that you're already a convert to 
the UNIX cause.)

The simple answer is the integration of UNIX and hardware.  A workstation
is built to run UNIX, a PC isn't.  The workstation comes with UNIX.  
The PC doesn't, any UNIX you run is grafted on top.  Now the specifics.

All of the below is pointless unless you
1) want to run UNIX
2) want to run Xwindows

1) Hardware performance
A 25MHz 486 and a 25MHz Sparc machine are roughly the same performance when
running CPU-bound jobs.  So what.  The most important aspect of any computer
from the user's viewpoint isn't its specmark but its ability to respond
rapidly to user input.  Once you saddle yourself with X-windows, it takes
a lot of I/O to get any kind of decent response.  A 486ISA PC has a maximum bus
speed to the graphics card in the 10Mb/s range.  A SparcStation has a 
maximum bus speed to the graphics card in the 80Mb/s range.  (Typical rates
are about 1/3 of this.  But the ratio stays the same.)  Note that all the I/O
is driven through this bus.

2) Available Hardware
When you decide that you want to stuff those fast bus slots with something
extra, there isn't as much choice as there would be for ISA BUS systems.
Once again, so what.  What there is, if you can afford it, represents
serious application acceleration capabilities.  For example, a floating
point accelerator for a 486isa might entail a Weitek chip.  SparcStations,
not noted for stunning floating point performance, already have Weitek
floating point chips builtin.  Floating point accelerators tend to offer
well more than a 100MFLOPS.  (At least the new ones.)

3) Graphics.
UNIX workstations aren't called graphics workstations for nothing.  The
smallest display resolution is 1152*900.  After you've used a big screen,
you'll never be able to go back to 640*480.  Graphics screens can have
significantly higher resolution, and tend to include dedicated accelerators
that leave 34010 TIGA boards or XGA in the dust.  (Even the cheap ones are
about as fast as a 34020TIGA board.)  (The really fast graphics cards are
amazing.)

Now, some simple reasons why I chose a Sun machine.
1) Cheapest RISC workstation when I bought it.
2) Cheapest machine with expansion slots.  (Don't buy a slotless machine)
3) The most compatible with existing netsource.  If your netsource doesn't
   run on a Sun, it won't run ever.(Not quite, but you get the idea)
4) Still some of the cheapest.
5) Complete version of UNIX included - compilers, debuggers, etc.  (Not
   anymore I guess, Sun has started dismantling Solaris into pieces.  But
   #3 combined with GNU will alleviate the pain here.  (I hope.))
6) xnews.  NeWS is great, whatever you might have heard, NeWS is way better
   than X11 and better than DPS and runs extremely efficiently, even if it
   does need a 12Mb machine.
7) Most software for a workstation
8) Only workstation for which the marked volume is such that you can get
   some software at PC-like prices.  (Check out the Indigo and then ask how
   much you'll pay for a page layout program.  OUCH.)

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