[rescue] Re: [geeks] THIS. MAKES. ME. SICK.

[Jonathan Katz]

Dave wrote:
>   Yup...under pressure from suits, they dumped their real computers
> and started making little tiny PeeCees.  This would have resulted in
> bankruptcy (or nearly so) like it has in just about every other
> company that has made that move, but Sun bought them just in time.

I thought the story came from the additional R&D costs needed in
keeping the Linux/MIPS port afloat. Sure, there is a lot of cool
factor there, but being the maintainer of an OS port vs. a user
or co-developer means a big difference in $$$ Maybe that is driven
by the suits, but that's business.

When other costs (hardware) are put into consideration, the difference
when buying MIPS in quantity vs. x86 in quantity is negligable. The
other question would be are the MIPS MBs used in the original RAQs
off-the-shelf or were they in-house/custom designed? It's a lot cheaper
for a company to go w/ the off-the-shelf design.

Sun has gobs of embedded processors, boards, and apps they need
more customers for. It will be interesting to see which architecture
Cobalt goes with in the long run.

-Jon