From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Robert G. Brown" Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:59:33 +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 Sat, 11 Jul 1998, Matthew Jacob wrote: > > > > > Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 19:21:14 -0700 (PDT) > > From: Matthew Jacob > > > > Yes, but at the high end costs of CPUs are irrelevant since it > > usually becomes storage and network infrastructure costs that > > predominate. > > > > This argument sounds %100 logical and correct. > > > > But then why doesn't Intel just cause 4 way SMP machines to cost $20k > > just like Sun? > > > > Good question, although the answer may be "Intel is not in > the system's business". > > > > ...and "manufacturer's who use Intel chips in 4+ CPU SMP machines have to actually compete in an open market".... I'm also not sure about the original premise. At the high end of multiprocessing systems (or even at the low end:-), I would have expected the bulk of the cost to be in the design and implementation of the bus structure that connects the processors to enable shared access to memory, peripherals, and each other to facilitate high speed IPC's. Disk is cheap (especially when packaged for a standard interface, i.e. -- SCSI UW on a PCI bus) and really NIC's (similarly packaged) are too. Getting disk and networks onto a bus (proprietary or otherwise) and interfaced with lots of processors and memory and working out all the DMA issues and cache coherence issues and busmastering issues -- that's expensive. I thought the real claim to fame of all of Sun's multiprocessing systems (and the SP2, and the Power Challenge, and the...) has always been their really fast/expensive IPC bus, not their interface to peripherals. rgb Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb@phy.duke.edu