Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 00:57:34 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, dscheidt@enteract.com, ragnar@sysabend.org, noslenj@swbell.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: dual 400 -> dual 600 worth it? Message-ID: <199912160057.RAA28775@usr09.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19991215173331.046e1aa0@localhost> from "Brett Glass" at Dec 15, 99 05:36:25 pm
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> > > >The glue needed to build an N-way > > > >machine will always be less expensive than N uniprocessor boxes. > > > > > > Not so. The special chip sets are usually priced at a premium. > > > >I think this is because they work, and allow things like more > >than 2 PCI bus masters at a time, compared to many chipsets, > >whose arbitration logic fails over 2 PCI masters. > > That's correct. Most of these chipsets are produced in relatively > small volumes by server manufacturers, who must devote a lot of > time, effort, equipment, and staff to R&D. One pays a premium > for that! My point here was that I don't give a damn how cheap it is, if it doesn't work. It doesn't matter if I'm getting a palm computer, a pager, or installing a network operations center: if it doesn't work, it's not useful for anything but landfill. > The most cost-effective solution, when one needs more computing > resources than fit cheaply into one box, is to find ways to > distribute the problem cleanly among MANY boxes. SMP is, most > of the time, either a last resort or a way to throw money at > the problem rather than finessing it. I'm not even involved in your SMP thread; I'm only saying that what's "special" about the chipsets you seem to find too expensive is that they actually _work_, compared to the cheaper chipsets you are putatively defending. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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