[rescue] Sunburst

[Andrew Jones]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 07:49:34PM -0400, Nemo wrote:
> On 20 May 2010 18:13, John Lengeling <John.Lengeling at radisys.com> wrote:
> > Since we are all remembering the good old days of Sun.
> 
> Here is a story of a wholly subjective comparison of Sparc versus
> Intel.  I had a U10 (440 MHz and 1 GiB) running Sol 10 as well as an
> IBM PC (~500 MHz and 1 GiB) running SuSE  under my desk.  I was
> compiling a patched gcc 4.1.2 (for a language that used the gcc
> front-end) and needed to compile a patched gdb as well.  Both were
> compiling on the U10 and I was editing with emacs as they trudged
> along.  I thought: Why not try that on the PC?  The dual compilation
> brought the PC to its knees with a noticeable delay between the typing
> of a character and its appearance on the screen.  Compilation on the
> U10 finished long, long before that on the PC.  (I know. I know.  The
> PC architecture is crippled, still...)
> 

Sad to say, in 1999, that 440 MHz USIIi was very nearly the fastest "desktop" SPARC.  The fastest Pentium III was 733 MHz -- your 500 MHz was a low-end unit.  The writing was already on the wall.  (Also: dollars to donuts your U10 was SCSI, and the wintel had toy disks in it.)