[geeks] Daily Dose of Unix

[Kurt Huhn]

"Chris Byrne" <chris at chrisbyrne.com> wrote:
> Irix is clearly the best for multimedia and probably the best for
> scientific computing, but it's security is among the worst. 
> 

Well, out of the box maybe, but with a little work it becomes as tight as
any other.  I rarely do default instals without tweaking the security.  Even
Solaris is a fucking nightmare when it comes to security and default
installs.

> AIX is probably the best for large scale database work, but that may
> just be because of DB2. I personally thin AIX + DB2 is the best of the
> major commercial DB platforms out there now. 
> 

I'm not convinced of that.  SGI has some seriously rocking database installs
using Origin systems - that's what they're used for really.  The Onyx
systems are desinged for visualization, while Origins are huge honking data
movers.

Now I sound like a SGI weenie.


> > R10k Octanes are a dime a dozen these days, and you can go to 
> > dual R10k for
> > $modest_num.  MXE is going to be expensive, but ESI+TRAM is 
> > reasonable (and
> > SI+TRAM is dirt cheap, relatively speaking).  To get the same graphics
> > performance out of a U60 would call for a very large 
> > investment of cash,
> > last I checked.
> 
> I can get an Elite3D M6 equipped Ultra 60 with 2x300 and 1GB for
> $1000-$1500. Near as I can figure dual octane MXE with a gig is gonna
> run at least 2k, prolly quite a bit more. 
> 
> What is the difference in graphical capability between the two?
> 

Spec results are hard to come by these days for some reason (at least not
without a huge amount of research/compilation of results).  However, you'll
find that an MXE, if that's what you want, will stomp all over an Elite3DM6.
 Neither Sun nor SGI has contributed to Spec benchmarks in some time - at
least not as published on Spec's website.  If you go back into 2000 and 1999
you'll probably find ViewPerf and GLPerf results from both.

Hrm, in looking, it appears that most results are Windows2000/x86 based
results.  Bleagh...


-- 
Kurt                     
kurt at k-huhn.com