Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 05:20:23 -0700 From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM> To: aledm@pavilion.co.uk (Aled Morris) Cc: freebsd-platforms@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What Platform? Message-ID: <199507251220.FAA00662@corbin.Root.COM> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 25 Jul 95 12:07:43 BST." <199507251107.MAA00968@prinny.pavilion.co.uk>
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>What is the perceived wisdom on PowerPC vs. Alpha (in terms of >FreeBSD porting, obviously). > >Which is most likely to be easiest? Most useful? In progress? Since noone has yet done a BSD port for the PowerPC, it would be difficult to say which is easier. There is a port to the Alpha-PC in its infancy, but don't expect to see anything about this until the end of the year at the earliest. >DEC are almost giving away Alpha systems, and they do have a mean >CPU. Will they survive? DEC is doing quite well with the Alpha and I expect it will continue to gain momentum. >On the other hand, the Motorola PowerPC platform (PCI bus etc.) isn't >expensive, and would make a fine BSD based server platform. Is the >Motorola system "standard", or will future PowerPC systems follow some >Apple or IBM design, rendering a Motorola style system obsolete? You can get Apple PowerPC's, but I've not heard of any IBM-style available yet...and I haven't heard of the "Motorola" design. I admit to not knowing a whole lot about the PowerPC in general. I honestly think that the Alpha has more potential than the PowerPC given the general market response to both. >My interest is from the point of view of an Internet Service Provider >looking for scalable, manageable platforms for Internet services (WWW, >mail processing, etc.) Getting a 10% CPU performance boost from Intel >every six months isn't enough. Actually it's a lot more than that. The speed of Intel CPUs is supposedly doubling every 18 months. ...but I agree that Intel is consistently behind the performance curve compared to the Alpha or PowerPC. > My biggest worry is that by choosing >FreeBSD over Sun (say) I'm losing out on that scalability (want to >support more users on your SS20? Easy, add more CPUs. Full? Go to >a 1000). We're working on SMP and have a primitive SMP kernel already working. This work will continue - with the primary goal being the support of 4 processor P6 machines. The problem with the Sun stuff is that it is so expensive. I think you'll find that the PC stuff, which is perhaps not as nice in many ways, is still much cheaper in terms of dollars/MIP than Sun. I expect this to continue well into the future. -DG
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