[geeks] Apple vs. Sun

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 04:37:25PM -0500, Andrew Weiss wrote:
> I can only think of one Sun advantage that will probably be invalidated with
> the next-gen Apple architecture (the single CPU on die POWER4 derivative).
> 
> 64 bit addressing versus 32.

You're missing the big one - Binary compatibility (and thus scalability)
from 1 proc to 106 procs in the one host.

The same software which runs on that $2k workstation will run on your 
Sun Fire 15K running with >100 CPUs, and vica versa, with near linear
scaling from 1 to 100 (presuming a well written app).

That's probably the main reason I see people buy Suns for small systems,
because they know that when that small system becomes a large system, the
upgrade path is clear and simple (even if it's not necessarily cheap).

  Scott