Glenn Cole <[log in to unmask] wrote:

>Forbes has an interesting, moderately short article on Sun
Microsystems.
>Among other things, it mentions their "Starfire" machine:
>"The Starfire mainframe class computers can have up to 64
microprocessors running at the same time inside a
>box the size of a refrigerator, support 64 gigabytes of memory and have
a maximum storage capacity of 60
>terabytes. A whole roomful of 450-plus MHz Intel PCs cannot match the
computing power of a single Starfire
>mainframe."
>Sure, but the real question is which will stay up longer.  Tough call.
;)

I've got two Suns and UltraEnterprise 450 (3 way - can go to 4-way) and
Ultra Enterprise 6500 (12-way, can go to 30-way); both have been very
reliable. In fact the only problem I've had was a panic on the 6500
because one of the CPUs wasn't torqued down properly (yes, you read that
correctly)
The UE10000 (the Starfire that Glenn mentions) is basically Cray
technology, it's also interesting because it can be partitioned to run
multiple instances of the operating system; imaging doing that with HP
hardware - running MPE in one partition and HP-UX in another.
Evan