Re: Poor Sun timings, as competition...

[Qobi@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey Mark Siskind)]

    Date: Mon, 6 Aug 90 13:28 EDT
    From: Gary Roberts <GRoberts@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

        Date: Tue, 31 Jul 90 18:19 EDT
        From: Qobi@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey Mark Siskind)

            Bubba sez: M-sh-C.  And as he has said before, ignorance is truly bliss
            (even the truth is relative). 

        Most of the time, recompiling an entire 600 line file under the Lucid
        development compiler on a Sparcstation I+ will be faster then recompiling
        a single function on a 3640 with m-sh-C.
                Jeff

    That's pretty interesting.  Is there someone out there who could tell me
    how fast an XL1200 is vs. a Sun 2? :)

Pretty funny. You are missing my point however. It is very unlikely that many people
will buy XL1200s. As much as I would like one, MIT will not buy a >$45K machine (XL1200)
that performs about the same as an <$10K machine (SparcStation I+). I will strengthen
my claim:
  Most of the time, recompiling an entire 600 line file under the Lucid
  development compiler on a Sparcstation I+ will be faster then recompiling
  a single function on an XL1200 with m-sh-C!
                          ------
Yes, it is true that the development environment on Symbolics is better than on a Sun
but the gap is closing. While Genera 8.0 is an improvement over System 98.0, everybody
else is also improving, and at a rate faster than Symbolics. Though they are not yet
there, they are quickly catching up. In 1982 the claim that the Symbolics development
environment was light years ahead of the competition was truly valid. It isn't so
any more. What the m-sh-C example shows is that sometimes raw speed more than makes
up for lack of a fancy feature. IMHO there is a lot of latent speed left in Symbolics
machines, both the XL1200 and even the lowly 3640---if only a decent compiler was
written for it. Two months ago I would never have thought of giving up my Symbolics
machine. I was a staunch defender of it. But two months of hacking Lucid on SparcStation I+
has made me think twice. Speed may not be the only thing but it sure is an important
factor. Price/Performance is another. You can't live on your laurels forever.
        Jeff