On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 11:17:11PM +0200, Michael Andersen wrote: > Don't get me wrong, I am pleased to work with Sun hardware daily and I > use it privately as well - and although the design is more pleasing than > x86, there is no reason to pretend that the SPARC architecture is the > fastest today or in the future.
This isn't a comment to Michael directly, I just want to vent, since we've gotten onto this topic. I've had this conversation over and over with x86-centric friends, who simply cannot understand that "fast" is not the be-all end-all of computing. SPARCs have never been about fast; they are about load-handling. The SPARC was made for, and grew up in, a multiuser environment where hundreds or thousands of processes are running at once. The x86 grew up in single-user machines where the priority has always been to do whatever the user is looking at as fast as possible. I do agree, though, that Sun's is just hurting itself by charging completely ridiculous prices for machines which are *basically* equivalent to what are considered "high end" servers in the x86 world. The V100 costs $1k, and that's fine, but the v210 costs almost $6k if you actually want 2 CPUs. That's bad. A mostly-comparable dual G4 XServe can be had for $2.8k. I guess, were I an analyst, which I'm not, my analysis would be that Sun either needs to treat the low-end market like a low-end market or leave it. -- Shawn Boyette [EMAIL PROTECTED]