From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Dec 15 9:45:40 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mail.enteract.com (mail.enteract.com [207.229.143.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 416F1152E9 for ; Wed, 15 Dec 1999 09:45:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dscheidt@enteract.com) Received: from shell-1.enteract.com (dscheidt@shell-1.enteract.com [207.229.143.40]) by mail.enteract.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id LAA84904; Wed, 15 Dec 1999 11:45:29 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dscheidt@enteract.com) Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 11:45:29 -0600 (CST) From: David Scheidt To: Brett Glass Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: dual 400 -> dual 600 worth it? In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19991215092357.04938b50@localhost> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [ cc list trimmed. ] On Wed, 15 Dec 1999, Brett Glass wrote: > At 09:02 AM 12/15/1999 , David Scheidt wrote: > > >On NonPC machines, CPU cost is a pretty small fraction of system > >cost. > > That's because, on more proprietary systems, the costs of other > components are artificially high -- usually by artifice. I remember My point was that NonPC machines tend to have a higher peripherial loads, and better designed hardware. They have things like memory subsystems that support 16-way interleaving and multiple-bit ECC. They are also much lower volume, which pushes up the cost of parts. The setup costs for an ASIC are much the same if you are making 20,000 or a million. > trying to put a generic SCSI drive into an SGI system several years > ago. It was a struggle, because they used special mounting brackets > and a special connector, trying to make it look as if you HAD to > buy the drive from them at 4X the going price. But it was a plain > old SCSI drive, and you could tell which brand by looking at the > mechanical design. HP aren't so bad about that. They do use a proprietary disk enclosure system, but it is very nice, and we did look at other systems. Equivelent systems weren't much cheaper, and didn't have as good guarantees about long-term replacement part availability. If a system has a design life-time of seven years, you want to be sure you can get spares in 6.5! (You can, of course, stockpile them yourself, but there are non-trivial costs involved with that. ) David scheidt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message