[rescue] RE: SGI vs. Sun

[Sheldon T. Hall]

 Jones, Andrew I writes ...

> Yeah, but for every Origin, there was an Indigo 2.  Doesn't 
> anyone remember the dog systems?

Hey, I resemble that remark!

> The I2's can't even saturate a 100 mbit ethernet connection, 
> leaving their monstrous processors spinning their wheels.

I dunno about that.

I think the EIDE bus isn't fast enough to feed the NIC, not to mention the
3COM NIC's being half-duplex with the usual hacked Phobos driver.  My
understanding is that the real Phobos card on the GIO bus is _much_ better.
Prolly still poly-unsaturated, though.
 
> At least we can say Sun never produced anything so crippled 
> as an R10k I2, right? ;)

I rather like my R10K I^2.

However, in doing all these comparisons, I think one ought to take into
account the era, as well as the cost of the machine.  Things were changing
fast in the middle 90s, when the I^2 was built.  I think the SPARCclassic
was still in production at the same time as the SGI I^2, but the I^2 was a
later design, and cost 2 or 3 times as much as a SPARCclassic.

I've got a 1997 spec sheet for an SGI Challenge XL, with prices, at
http://tandem.artell.net:8080/software/Challenge_XL_BenchMark.pdf, if you
want to see what $2,875,275.20 bought back then.  I don't see 100BaseT on
the options list. 

-Shel