From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bob Drzyzgula Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:40:22 +0000 Subject: Re: Ultra AXmp Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: ultralinux@vger.kernel.org On Mon, Jul 13, 1998 at 02:27:27AM -0400, Qiru Zhou wrote: > After I looked the web page: > http://www.sun.com/microelectronics/SPARCengineUltraAXmp > > 1. Operating system cost, stability and performance: > Unlike low end dual PII's, nobody will buy it just to > play with it. Then the question is what OS should I use. > If I use Solaris, what is the cost of the OS+dev environment? > >From my last experience, this will be over $3000 per user. > If I use Linux SMP for Sparc, what is the current status of > it? Is it stable enough for a production system? Actually, To play with, get an AXi. A bootable system with 128MB of memory and maybe 4GB of disk should be obtainable for under $3K total. A four-user copy of Solaris Server costs around $600 or less. If you want a low-cost SMP Sun to play with, there are a few places you can get remanufactured Suns for pretty cheap. The Ultra 2s are still holding their price, and sell for maybe $6-10K used depending on configuration. You can get a dual-processor SS 20 or even a 1000 for less than $5K, if you don't mind messing around with Mbus stuff. I, too am very interested in how UltraPenguin would do on the AXmp, and still would like very much to know what people thought about this... > Line one means you have to fill at least 8 slot of identical > DIMMS and line two means these DIMM are pretty old and you > need special order. The EDO/FPM DIMMS are extremely non-standard. > Read http://silicon.micron.com/crucial/cart/html/selector.cfm, > then you know what I am talking about. I've in several occassion > to asked vendor make a special assemble of these DIMMs. In my experience, EDO ECC DIMMs are generally available. From http://www.pricewatch.com I see that 32MB units should cost around $38, meaning you could populate eight slots with a total of 256MB for around $300. 128MB modules for this board should be well under $200 each. Anyone who sells any of the AX* motherboards should have the correct memory in stock. The procurement group at my office has had no trouble finding DIMMs such as these, and they do a lot more PC stuff than Sun stuff. Offline I can give you the names of some vendors if you want... > I hope this time Sun > learned how to compete and makes some interesting offfers. Otherwise > I don't think there are going to be long that Sun drops their > Sparc from workstation line, as SGI did. Same here. Sun does have, however, a record of being extremely scrappy, independant and stubborn, often to a fault. They are also doing reasonably well in terms of sales. Following the release of the AXi, the sales of that board quickly cleared out their inventory and overran their production; there was about a 30-day period when you pretty much couldn't buy one. I don't expect them to cave in any time soon. --Bob -- ============================== Bob Drzyzgula It's not a problem bob@drzyzgula.org until something bad happens ==============================