Re: Symbolics color system speed

[bouma@PURDUE.EDU]

       From Henry Mendenhall:

       So anyway, we could sure use some advice
       about what direction to take in our new purchases.  Among the possible
       strategies are:

        1. get 3650's with cad-buffer-II and hope Symbolics somehow upgrades
           the buffer to get more drawing speed.

Hoping for things is no guarentee that they will happen.

        2. get XL400's and hope Symbolics will support its color software on
           some 3rd party VMEbus color hardware.

unlikely

        3. get Ivory board embedded in some fast color Sun.

All the color Suns I have ever seen draw at about the same speed as Symbolics.
Plus you gotta wait for the Ivory to come out.

        4. get Ivory board embedded in Silicon Graphics?

Acording to the SG guy I was talking to a couple days ago, there are plans to
do this. But I forget how long he said it would be, probably a long time.
(year or more)

        5. keep a Silicon Graphics next to the Symbolics and use X-Windows.

This seems like your only feasible solution if you really must have your code
running on Symbolics. You also will have the option of upgrading to the Ivory
when it comes out. But if you can port your Symbolics windows code to run
under X, why not just port your whole application to run on the SG? Common Lisp
has a few bugs in it yet on the SG, but it sure runs fast.

Bill <bouma@cs.purdue.edu>  ||  ...!purdue!bouma