From owner-freebsd-chat  Wed Dec 15 22: 6:49 1999
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Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 23:06:26 -0700
To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Subject: Re: dual 400 -> dual 600 worth it?
Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, dscheidt@enteract.com,
	ragnar@sysabend.org, noslenj@swbell.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
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At 05:57 PM 12/15/1999 , Terry Lambert wrote:

>My point here was that I don't give a damn how cheap it is,
>if it doesn't work.

In this business, "cheap" doesn't necessarily mean "doesn't
work;" more often, it means "high volume." Which, in a
competitive market, means that it is more likely to work. 
The bugs will come out quickly, and customers will switch
to other products if they're not fixed. (A non-competitive
market, such as desktop operating systems, is another
story, of course.)

> > The most cost-effective solution, when one needs more computing
> > resources than fit cheaply into one box, is to find ways to
> > distribute the problem cleanly among MANY boxes. SMP is, most
> > of the time, either a last resort or a way to throw money at
> > the problem rather than finessing it.
>
>I'm not even involved in your SMP thread; I'm only saying that
>what's "special" about the chipsets you seem to find too expensive
>is that they actually _work_, compared to the cheaper chipsets
>you are putatively defending.

I've seen some darn good "cheap" chipsets. VIA's come to
mind. In fact, VIA was good enough to be tapped by AMD to design
the motherboard chipsets for the Athlon.

--Brett


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