Advice requested on Sparcstation purchase

[Carl Rigney]

In article <7049 at brazos.Rice.edu> you write:
>
>o Although the Sparcstation is slow compared with the DEC and IBM boxes,
>  it is more compatible with existing astronomy software. Offsettting the
>  MFLOP disadvantage is a lower price and perhaps better graphics
>  performance (400K 2-d vectors/sec with GX option compared with 90 and 300
>  for IBM and DEC). Has anyone done side-by-side tests of SUNS vs the new
>  DEC/IBM boxes? Is I/O bandwidth any different? Any other useful comparisons?

Sun is only shipping the 4/65 (Sparcstation 1+) now at the same price as
the 4/60 but 50% faster (15 MIPS instead of 10; don't know about MFLOPS).
The top IBM & DEC workstations are faster, but their operating systems are
buggier; expect little annoying glitches.  The Decstation 2100 and 3100
don't have DMA so when you do I/O from the SCSI disk 1/3 of your CPU gets
eaten.  If you have several disks and use them a lot lots of your CPU gets
eaten.  I don't know if the 5000 has the same problem but I'd check it out
*very* closely.

>o To what extent could we interchange files, programs betwen the SUN and
>  our VAXcluster? Will FTP, TELNET work? Can we setup things up to share
>  disks? 

Your Vaxcluster is running VMS?  If you have TCP/IP on it FTP & Telnet
should work.  For sharing disks, I've heard there's NFS for VMS but I
don't know anything about it.  DEC says they include DECnet as of Ultrix
4.0 (but doublecheck); Sun has DECnet as a layered product.  I haven't
used either, but don't know why anyone would use DECnet if they could use
TCP/IP instead.

>o We have an 8mm tape drive on the VMS host (VAXstation-3200).  Can we
>  somehow arrange things so the tape drive is a shared resource, perhaps by
>  hanging it on the Ethernet?

I *seriously* doubt it.  I know there are 8mm drives for Suns (Sun even
sells them, but I don't know if they support the Sparcstation).  If you
have it one Sun you can use it from any of them via rmt.  Allegedly SunOS
4.1 has RFS, which allows you to use devices across the net, but it may be
painful.

>o Is the SEDT editor available on the SUN? (I heard there was a `UNIX'
>  version, but does that imply Sun-OS?)

I don't know what SEDT is.  Sparcs have a large software base, much larger
than the DECstation, much much larger than the IBMs.  If it runs on any
workstation at all it probably runs on the Sparcstation, but that's just
my guess.  Your Sun SalesRep should be able to look it up in the Catalyst
catalog.

>o Can anyone advise us about the impending Sparcstation-2? In particular,
>  when it maight be announced? I have heard (a) it will `exceed' the MFLOPS
>  rating of the IBM box, (b) will only be available in monochrome initially.

The 4/65 has been announced and is shipping now, but Sun's calling it a
1+.  I've heard rumors that Sun plans to bring out a cheaper
Sparcastation, but don't know how fast that will be compared to the 4/60
and 4/65.  I assume they'll be coming out with something that can match
DEC's & IBM's top products, but don't when or how much.

>o How is the Fortran compiler compared with VAX-VMS? I heard the early
>  releases were extremely buggy, with no extensions beyond vanilla F77.

Sun makes a Fortran compiler you can buy for $1200 or so (list; I don't
know what your discount is).  I'd heard it was compatible with VAX-VMS
Fortran but don't know how it compares performance-wise - we don't use
Fortran.

I've seen DEC's comparisons of the DEC 5000 vs. the Sparcstation 1 (not
1+) and IBM Powerstation 320.  DEC shows itself being better (big
surprise) than Sun, with the IBM being far below either.  I haven't seen
Sun's comparisons.

Other factors:  ALL of the Decstation 2100s we got suffered various infant
mortality problems.  DEC swears its some kind of statistical fluke and
that none of their other customers have had problems.  Right.  But maybe
they fixed their QA for the 5000.  Nothing else uses the MIPS processor
with the byte-order reversed the way DEC does (as far as I know), and DEC
is selling maybe 1/10 as many workstations as Sun so who do you think
vendors will port to first?  The IBM Powerstations look like nice
hardware, but I plan to wait until more bugs settle out of AiX and more
software is available for them.

My own inclination would be to get the Sparcstation 1+ (4/65), because
they're here now and they have a large software base available, but I'm
biased - I'm using a 4/60 now and like it a lot.  Another advantage of
Sparcs is that when OpenWindows 2.0 comes out in a few months you can use
NeWS as well as X, and NeWS is amazing!  (I'm using OW 1.0 now and its
very nice, but will get much faster and less piggy in 2.0, I'm told.)

You might also consider looking at Solbourne or Silicon Graphics.  I've
heard SGI now makes a low-end 3D workstation that's pretty nice.

Carl Rigney
cdr at amdcad.AMD.COM
{ames decwrl pyramid sun uunet}!amdcad!cdr

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