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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stormweaver who wrote (21638)	10/22/1999 2:44:00 PM
From: Robert	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Sun Ras. One has to think really hard to justify why a SMP machine with 64 cpu's would be preferable over 64 PC's in a Beowulf cluster. Like you say, RAS is naturally easier with a distributed program which utilises the software level to manage the hardware. Where large CPU SMP's come in is where large traffic low latency becomes an issue, for example transaction processing. The extra layer of software (eg Beowulf or even PVM) and network speed increases the latency significantly. Of course, price/performance is the key metric and so long as the machines are economical, they will find a market.