New DEC announcement, 7/11

[George Robbins]

In article <18553 at mimsy.UUCP> steve at fnord.umiacs.umd.edu (Steven D. Miller) writes:
> 
>    DEC had a big product announcement on 7/11...
> 
> 	3) DECserver 5810/DECserver 5820.  Features:
> 
> 		MIPS R3000 chipset, 18-20 MIPS per CPU, 2.1/4.8 MFLOPS
> 		    LINPACK per CPU, 2 CPUs max; I suspect that plugging
> 		    in more CPUs will work, but I also suspect that two
> 		    saturate the XMI bus, and that's why DEC doesn't want
> 		    to sell this with more than two CPUs

Well, maybe that no Ultrix supported CPU supports more than two processors
to date (see previous discussion on this).  The XMI bus appears to be
adequately fast, given that the CPU cards each have a reasonable size
cache.

Sounds *real* nice to me, *iff* the price tag is at the low end of the
6X00 range and not off the high end.  Lots of MIPS, real I/O (even if
it's all BI/CI based) and I don't have to worry about the VMS types
trying to make off with it.

> 		Packaging identical to VAX 6000 series (yes, CPU swaps
> 		   are technically feasible, though it's not clear yet
> 		   if there's any way to buy one)

Probably you will be able to get them, but not afford them.  The pricing
on the 6200/6300 CPU cards looks like the biggest rape since the 8600->8650
upgrade.  It looks like DEC is trying hard to maintain high-end system
sales by artificially high pricing on mid-range CPU card pricing...

I mean they're allowed to, but if I go for a multi-processor architecture,
I want multi-processors, not a uni-processor and a bunch of slots that I
can't justify the $$$ to fill.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,	uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr at uunet.uu.net
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)