I've been a lurker for sometime, but I felt a few points
should be addressed. I am a design engineer at RTEC.
I am a shareholder. All the opinions below are my own
and are based on what I believe to be public knowledge.
<SOAPBOX MODE ON>
One of the big factors that is often overlooked when
comparing an Ultra vs a HyperSTATION is upgradeabilty.
The Ultra I machines have it's cpu soldered to the board.
When you buy an Ultra I, its a lot like buying an SS2 or SS5,
your stuck, there is no upgradeing in the future, and definetly
no MP (multi-processing) capability EVER! Even the Ultra 2
which has MP is limited to two processors, similarly they are
not upgradeable either.
Now you have addressed this in academia. But Ross has proven
by creating the upgrade concept and developing it into a multi-million
dollar a year business when Sun previously veered away from Ross'
micro-processors a few years ago, there is a strong interest in
leveraging value while maintaining top notch performance with your
capital assets. I wouldn't want to be the one to sign-off on
a PO knowing I'm going to have to replace (or live with ) the
equipment in short order. How long will you be using that Ultra?
How much longer will you be using your HyperSTATION, esp after
you upgrade it and keep your users happy ever 6 months?
As an example, I have on my desk one of the original SS20
machines from SUN (so old in fact that it has no CD or Floppy!)
(3-4yrs?). I have been running quad processing since day one.
Originally with 72Mhz modules, now I have 125Mhz modules and will
soon be converting over to 150Mhz - 1/2 meg cache versions. I use
the same monitor same disks, memory, everything -- I change out the
processors when they become available. Most importantly -- I run
the same software! I can boot in SUN-OS or Solaris if I please.
My story is repeated everywhere in our design departments.
How much money has this saved our company!?!
From my experience, very few machines at our company, and certainly
in academia run only one job at a time. In fact most of the time
there are many users running on the same machines. Thats where MP
comes in. For the same $$$ you get more processors in the Ross
HyperSTATIONS. While, depending on the application, the HyperSTATION
will be neck and neck with the Ultra, what happens when your run
more than one application? Throw in a simulation, and a quick
peak at whats on SI via Netscape -- and you have the real world!
This is where MP and HyperSTATIONS really bring the big bang for the
buck! Remember too, one of the major features of SOLARIS is its
multi-threaded capability. Although there are limited applications
that are MT capable, those that do need multiple processors to
make them work effectively!
There may be many pitfalls in life awaiting all of US, but
the Ultra, IMHO, is not going to kill off RTEC.
<SOAPBOX MODE OFF>
Thank You,
Mike Seningen
Sr IC Designer |
