lispm's at home

[p2@porter.asl.dialnet.symbolics.com (Peter Paine)]

    Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1991 19:56-0000
    From: cmaeda@EXXON-VALDEZ.FT.CS.CMU.EDU (Christopher Maeda)

    Now that I-machines and RISC chips have made G-machines only fit for
    home use :-), I was wondering what the cost would be to be able to
    legally run Genera at home.

(a) Don't we agree, especially as here (overseas) the PLA transfer can
be very much more expensive. And also because there are almost no
Symbolics machines available throughout academia - hence most graduate
entry into industry have never heard of Genera.

My vote for anything that allows Genera wider and more realistic
availability. 

(b) How I disagree. Genera is the finest environment extant today for
s/w research, design and development into "blue sky" applications. And
as such, I reckon that the thirst for extra cpu speed of Ivory or RISC
silicon amounts to an almost worthless compulsion. Speed of execution
amounts to what% of the quality of your design.

How much are your design and prototyping efforts actually advanced under
Genera were the h/w an asthmatic 3640 or an XL3600 hypercube?

Why the hot feelings here? I feel guilty at suffering from the power
lust myself, but realise that almost everything of value is found in
design and software and customer satisfaction.

(c) And finally, "only fit for home use" you say dismissively? Or do you
infer that the tree of excellence (re. space in which to work) is
crowned by "home", from which we descend by steps to some of the most
inert, positively stiffling environments suffered by the human mind -
computer labs.

    Last time I checked, there was a $10k license transfer fee and maybe
    $1-2k per year to keep the license current.  Has Symbolics adjusted
    this pricing structure to reflect market reality yet?  For my current
    home pc, a 12 SPECmark NeXT, I basically have to pay media costs to
    get software upgrades.  (And believe it or not, the environment is
    actually comparable to a lispm.)

    Christopher.Maeda@cs.cmu.edu