gauging interest in VAX 6000-530

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Mon Oct 25 02:39:49 1999

Mark Green <mark_at_cs.ualberta.ca> wrote:
> The problems is equivalent hardware. You can't configure a PC
> like a VAX, they are two different types of machines. A PC
> is tuned for a single user, while a VAX is tuned for many users.
> These are very different machine configurations, and even the latest
> PC would have no hope of keeping up to a decade old VAX running
> a large multiuser application.

False. I have personal experience with PCs serving the same kind
of workload you describe of VAXen, and they work fine.

> Many of the PC manufacturers
> have tried to scale PCs to this level and they have all failed.

Compaq's high-end x86 based servers don't seem to have failed.

> single bus systems like the PC can't scale to the performance required.

The bus in a modern PC isn't the issue. It's comparable to what's
in most workstations.

The problem is the software architecture. Despite all of the ballyhoo
surrounding MS Windows NT, the reality is that it is too bloated and
inefficient to support enterprise applications.


I'll agree with you that high-end server class machines today
are more powerful, have higher bandwidth busses, and more busses,
than most PCs. But how could it be otherwise? Anyhow, that's not what
this discussion was about.

The claim was that a 486DX2/66 PC could outperform a VAX 8650. And so
far, no one has refuted that claim, though many people seem to have
decided that it must be false, and given specious arguments as supposed
proof. Apparently there is some sort of near-religious belief that a
minicomputer (regardless of how old it is) MUST have better performance
than a PC.
Received on Mon Oct 25 1999 - 02:39:49 BST