Firefly says:
We are still going to sell Unix products like Octane, Onyx-2 and
Origin. Why would we want to sell pc's to run Unix when we already
have great products which do that already.
Because many of us have depended on having both high end
and lower end solutions which are compatible with each other. I
have a two-processor Octane on my desk, where I'm typing this.
I can't afford to put an Octane on every desk though: I got postdocs,
grad students and even high-school interns. We have the full
spectrum here: a 20-proc O2000, Octane, Impact I2, PI2, O2s, Indys,
and even R3000 Indigos. We depend on them being interoperable.
They form a single domain where one can move from one to the other
and use whatever resources are needed for the job.
If I have to start putting 1.5K$ PentiumII Linux boxen on intern's
desks, it devalues our O2000. Because you can't prototype
stuff on the small box and just run it on the big one as needed.
Hell, I can get 1K$ P-II boxen now. I can network 20 of them
together with 100BT, run RPI, and get something approaching decent
performance for the kinds of jobs we run here, for 20K$.
It's truly scary that someone from SGI does not understand this.
Marcelo |
