[rescue] emulation fun

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Monday 02 February 2009, Peter Corlett wrote:
> The Sun Fire X5400 "Thumper" is basically a PC with 48 SATA channels
> and four GigE network ports. Sun claim it can shuttle data between
> disk and network at 1GB/s, that is, all four ports running flat-out
> bidirectionally.

Indeed, I've seen rates as high as 1GB/sec between disk and memory, 
running just half of the drives (and it doubled when I was using both 
halves).

> PCs are no longer the cruddy old things with slow ISA busses that
> we've all mocked for decades.

Indeed. Some are (cheap desktop machines) but some aren't (the X4500 for 
example).  Sun's X4540 is even more impressive.  Then again, I wouldn't 
really consider that a "PC", any more than I'd consider a car with a 
6502 inside an NES or an Apple II.  The processor ISA is but one small 
part of the whole system.

Pat
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