EMC buys Data General

From: allisonp_at_world.std.com <(allisonp_at_world.std.com)>
Date: Mon Aug 9 15:20:03 1999

> >Dhrystone clocks it at 1974 MIPS (aka 1.974 GIPS!) Truely it boggles the
> >mind. I had to explain to our sysadmin how the uVAX 3900 sitting in my
> >office was about the speed of a 386/25 and he nearly choked.

First I think that is quite in error. First the clock on the 3900 is well
above 25mhz and the CISC impmentation of the VAX used there is easily
more of the 486dx/early Pentium class.

> Yeah but did you explain that you can pile 30 users on that 3900 and it'll
> still perform about the same? That's not even possible with current Wintel
> hardware.
>
> "There's more to computer performance than clock speed, folks."

Bigtime!

back when pc and Vaxen were being pitted, the 386/16 was on par with
a Vax750 if it had the FPU chip. Otherwise the vax could out math it.

A real compare would be a NT box running many xterms and thin clients
against a VAX... it would show how weak the PCs are. Vaxen with the high
throughput IO for storage and all has all the advantages.

Allison
Received on Mon Aug 09 1999 - 15:20:03 BST