Amiga 3000UX, X, OpenLook, Motif, Color, A2410, Etc. (somewhat long)

[Robert I. Eachus]

    I almost directed followups to comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, but what
the hey...

In article <1991Mar20.100122.1717 at kessner.denver.co.us> david at kessner.denver.co.us (David Kessner) writes:

   In article <19986 at cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh at cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:
   >Well, hey, they've been working on it since '87 or so.  I don't think they
   >possibly could have spent more time on it.  Better a B&W X that's solid than a
   >flakey color X or some-such.  This is, at the very least, a solid, complete
   >UNIX.  Bells and whistles later....

   How much would have color X delayed the A3000UX?  Five or six months would
   be my guess-- but I've never ported UNIX or X...

   But why delay at all?  I'm sure that if the choice was X11R3 on
Sys5R4 or X11R4 on Sys5R3 in the same time frame, Commodore made the
right choice. (The choice may have been exactly that, if I was doing
the X ports, I would insist on doing one update at a time, and I don't
think it was possible to do both in the time available.)  It shold be
easy to upgrade X, and there is every indication that will happen
soon, but moving from Sys5R3 to Sys5R4 would be no picnic for the
users.  That seems to be why Commodore decided not to release Sys5R3,
but to keep it in beta.


   >The A3000 was designed from the ground up as a high performance
   >multitasking personal computer.  That is something different than
   >a high performance single tasking computer, like your typical
   >'386/'486 system, or most Macs.

   Please elaborate.  My 386 UNIX box does quite well being a "High
   performance single tasking computer".  Actually the typical 386/486
   has two things agenst it: Graphic speed (which can always be solved
   by a $600 34010 board), and Microsoft.  I/O speeds are not really a
   problem since only very high-end disk drives get more than 2meg/sec
   of the 8mhz I/O bus, and since I run mine at 12mhz there is no
   shortage of bandwidth.  We can solve the Microsoft problem by not
   using MS-DOS or OS/2...

   The "typical" '386 or '486 system with an AT bus is not designed
for multiple bus masters, and in particular will allow disk DMA to
choke off the main CPU.  The Microchannel bus and some of the other
"top of the line" busses fix this problem.  Note that the problem is
more one of jerkiness than of throughput...it is very disconcerting if
keystrokes are not echoed promptly because of background paging, and
in fact this is more noticable with faster disks and controllers.

   >What constitutes a UNIX machine, on the other hand, is a matter of opinion.

   Yes.  IMHO, if the Amiga had been designed as a UNIX machine from
   the start they would have taken out much of the custom chips since
   sound and much of the blitter is of no use under UNIX.  They would
   have added a SIMPLE video display, perhapse text only, or a
   one-bitplane X choosing to rely on the 34010 board for most of the
   X Windows.  A larger case would be used, with more drive slots for
   more hard drives and internal tape backups.  A larger power supply
   would also be added for the extra drives.  A cache would be a nice
   addition, as would more serial ports-- but these are optional.

   Let's see the custom chips are probably the cheapest way for
Commodore to do video because they already manuafacture them, since
the chips are designed and in production, there is no cost savings to
be had by designing them out.  If you want a simple B/W video display,
get yourself a B/W monitor.  If you want a bigger B/W display, the 3000
(and the custom chips in it) already support one, and in fact that is
what Dave Haynie prefers to use.  I don't, but then again you get your
chioce.  If you would prefer a tower case, well Commodore announced
the 3000T in Germany last week.

   Commodore currently sells additional serial ports as an option for
the 3000, I suspect however that you will have to wait for the next
Unix release to use them.  There are no cache boards for the 3000 yet,
but the box was designed to support them.  However, I suspect that the
first cache boards for the 3000 will have a 68040 too.

   I realize, of course, that is C= ever did this _FOR_IT'S_FIRST_
   _UNIX_BOX_ that it'd go over about as well as the PS/1 did.  C=
   needs a larger UNIX market share before it can afford to put up the
   capital to do this type of thing.

   Why bother?  Commodore can stay in the "personal" market (including
workstations) which seems quite large enough.  Leave the mainframe
market (which is rapidly shrinking) to the established players.  I
think Commodore's strategy is a good one, the workstation vendors are
climbing upscale, and there is still a large market where 3-8 MIPS is
more than sufficent (look at all the Sun-3's still being used).  This
leaves an opening where Commodore can quickly become a large player.
The provision for upgrading with a 68040 (or 68050 down the road),
should avoid worries about future upgrades.

   >The A3000 will run UNIX as efficiently as the best personal
   >computers around, overall (UNIX performance is subject to more
   >than the Dhrystone benchmark as a measure), and can certainly be
   >upgraded to workstation performance levels.

   The Dhrystone benchmark works bes when comparing CPU's of the same
   family with the same compiler.  Ie, comparing the Apollo, HP, NCR,
   and NeXT 030 based machines with eachother.  It tends to show up
   little differences among them.  Comparing the 030 with the 386
   might be seen as a little skwed, and it is.  But when the A3000UX
   comes in at HALF the speed of the 386 then it raises more than an
   eyebrow-- and shows that it should be looked into further (ie, it
   isnt conclusive).  If soneone wants to mail me the Specmarks
   benchmark I'd be happy to run it...

   I think that there are two factors here.  First, Dhrystone 1.1
should not be used to benchmark anything.  There are too many
compilers which literally cheat (calculate incorrect values) on this
particular program.  Dhrystone 2.1 is much better at measuring
something other than the cleverness of the compiler writers.  Second,
the compilers, and the operating system itself, in the first release
of Amiga Unix worried more (much more) about correctness and reliability
than speed.

   Again this is the "right" decision for the intended market.  The
speed demons will all buy SPARCstation 2's while dreaming about
Silicon Graphics.  A customer who would be happy with a 3 MIPS
machine, won't mind that with the first OS release, the compiler only
gives him 4 MIPS of performance when number crunching from a 7 MIPS
box.  However, the excellent throughput of the stuff outside the main
CPU means that people like me, who hate to wait for a screen update,
will be very happy.  (In fact, a one point I would rlogin to a Sun
workstation in my office from my Amiga, because I could pop up a new
shell window faster on the Amiga.  I still do that, but I don't have
the Sun in my office any more.)

   The A3000UX can be upgraded to "workstation performance levels",
   but then puts it into "workstation prices".  Once your in that
   range, then the question is, "Why dont we just buy a workstation?"

   Huh? You lost me somewhere.  A suitably equipped Amiga meets any
definition of a workstation I've ever heard, including some that rule
out 90% of the workstations in use today. (Actually that is not quite
true, someone once tried to tell me that a workstation today HAD to
have a RISC processor...He was upset that we had ust run some
benchmarks which showed the Amiga was faster than a MIPS workstation.
(Flame retardant: This was an R2000 based machine, and the numbers
were fairly close, with the MIPS faster on floating point intensive
stuff, and the Amiga faster on scalars, and much faster on memory
intensive programs.)

   >You want something else, fine.  But at present, desktop UNIX
   >machines are way popular.  If you want a floor standing tower
   >machine, no problem.  But you have to realize that the desktop
   >version is far more popular, costs less, and generally gets
   >priority over the tower version.  I don't see any problem with
   >both, as long as Commodore want 'em both.

   Keeping the general UNIX theology:  Make It An Option!

   All that you'd really need is a redesigned case and maybe a power supply.
   I'm sure some third party has thought of this...

   And as I pointed out above, so has Commodore.  I don't think Dave
can "announce" things which Commodore has announce only in Europe, but
I don't work for Commodore.  Note that the 3000T has the same
motherboard but more slots.

   >>(with a REAL UART), 
   >
   >So what would ya be wantin'?  You got a real UART.  You're sayin'
   >you want a faster UART, that's a valid request.  "Real UART"
   >ain't.

   Sorry.  I was in that C-64 mode for a sec there.  You remember,
   where the CPU was practically resonsible for shifting in the bits
   in from the user port.

   I should say a faster UART, perhapse with a FIFO.  Like the 16550...

   Again, huh? If you want Ethernet speeds, use Ethernet.  There were
problems with the AmigaDOS serial port driver which made it tough to
go 19200 baud, but I believe both that that is fixed, and that the
multiport serial cards can run 38400 baud with no problem.  Again,
that's AmigaDOS, but I have never seen the UART's as the limiting
factor.

   >Nice AmigaOS machine too.  I figure Commodore has to get into the
   >$4000 computer business before it can tackel the $6000 computer
   >business, and so on up the scale.  Success in one is a good
   >indication that they'll let us do the next level.  There's no lack
   >of desire here, belive me.

   I dont want to sound negative here-- although I KNOW that it's how
   I am comming across as.  While I like the idea of C= being on the
   cutting edge, and UNIX is a natural progression, I think that the
   inital release of Amiga UNIX lacked the sparkle to launch it into
   the market.

   Having used UNIX machines for some time (anyone want to buy a used
   PDP-11?)  I have cone to expect more-- and the A3000UX did not fill
   my expectations.  Not that it is a bad machine, but it is not what
   I would expect from a UNIX machine.

   I see Amiga UNIX as an option for 030 based Amigas (be it the 3000,
   or another with an 030 accelerator).  I dont see it making a dent
   in the current workstation market.  With that in mind, C= might
   have been smarter to not bother with the UX, but sell UNIX for the
   Amiga on tape or CD-ROM.  But then again-- I'm no marketing GURU...

   See above.  I don't think Commodore is trying to crack the
"current" 10 MPIS+ workstation market with the 3000UX, but to play in
the field that the current big boys are leaving behind.  In this
market I suspect that price (as long as it is less than $10000) is
less of a factor than convenience, support, and the ability to "plug
and play."  If you look at what Commodore is doing, they seem to think
so too.

   I don't have any experience with '386 Unix boxes, but I have to
believe that Commodore is doing a lot better job of minimizing the
work required of a systems administrator responsible for a lot of
machines than Sun has ever done.  Knocking a couple thousand a year
per seat off of support costs would far outweigh any slight difference
in price.

   The reality of the NeXT cubes at MITRE has been that they are a
"hackers only" box.  Even where the user is capable of doing his own
support, we have a lot of them gathering dust, because the user
doesn't have the time to devote to the care and feeding of his
workstation Even if NeXT does a wonderful job with the new machines,
they may never dispell this impression.  And it is really a software
issue anyway.

   >Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   >   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy

   David Kessner - david at kessner.denver.co.us            | do {
   1135 Fairfax, Denver CO  80220  (303) 377-1801 (p.m.) |    . . .
   If you cant flame MS-DOS, who can you flame?          |    } while( jones);

--

					Robert I. Eachus

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