11780 or 2 11750's ??

[ron%brl-bmd at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:      Ron Natalie <ron at brl-bmd>

I would have to say that I think the 780 is the way to go.
Two 750's would not be as fast (well, if you add the MIPS they
are a little faster) but you would have the overhead of running
UNIX kernel in each processor.  The I/O is slower probably in
any case.  I'm all for redundancy (so how about a 782?) but it
would be nice to have a bigger machine so that everything was
centralized rather than distributed.  Mind you, I have nothing
about distributed computing, but if you are talking about colocating
the two 750's, I can't really see the point in it.

I don't know why your people think the the technology in the 750
is any more modern than in the 780.  It's just different in strange
ways (and slower).  DEC continually updates both processors with
regard to technology.  The memory density keeps increasing, for
example.  I have no indication that DEC will phase out the 780 until
they come up with something as fast or faster.  DEC is still pushing
780's and 782's all over the place.  In the past, when DEC wanted
to get rid of a product, they never had any great reservatins about
dropping it from the literature and going out and telling prospective
buyers that you really needed something else.

-Ron