[geeks] Re: New SGI workstation

[Gavin Hubbard]

>> > "The new system should serve this niche well and help pay the bills as
>> > the company transitions to Intel's Itanic processor."
>> 
>> Exit SGI I guess...
>
>Well, looking at a perspective; more Mips-based kickass hardware for us.
>
>> Philosofical question: what makes a PeeCee a PeeCee? The fact it has an Intel
>> cpu? I deem it possible to base a crap ide-based workstation with a shared
>> bus architecture and low memory bandwidth and all sorts of flaky hardware
>> around a Mips cpu, no?
>
>I see a flamewar coming, so I put on the firesuit and take cover;
>I'd say a PeeCee is a machine equipped around the x86-architecture,
>capable of running Linux-x86 or M$-products. That sorts out any
>possibilites misclassifying older Sequent-machines as PeeCees. (They are
>true iron, although running X86-processors)


This isn't a good definition as all of the Sequent quads from at least the Pentium Pro onwards are Intel MPS compliant systems. They even have onboard ports for a PS/2 keyboard and mouse (you have to remove some plastic plugs to reveal them). If you install a PCI video card, each individual quad will happily run its own instance of Windows or Linux/BSD. I believe that Sequent/IBM even offered a Windows conversion kit so customers could do this themselves. 

There is a Sequent PPro quad in the room next to me which is running win2k. No flames please - it is running win2k because I couldn't get the Emulex FC-AL cards working reliably under anything else.

I don't know if there is a good way of spliting the two classes apart. For instance I'd personally class the Sun Ultra 5 & 10 as PeeCees but I would class the SGI Zx10 as workstation. The difference is clearly more than the ISA.

Regards,

Gavin