23 Apr
2016
23 Apr
'16
7:45 a.m.
On 04/22/2016 01:03 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
Remember all the accelerator boards for the Mac, Amiga, and even PCs in the
90's ? I've often wished that I could get something similar on my older SGI
systems.
Well, I seem to remember that some of the desktop SGI machines could take a
variety of CPUs. Often though they were designed for a certain performance
point and if you wanted more you bought the next model up - and when I
worked with them commercially, a lot of hardware was technically under
lease; they'd bring out a new model and throw it our way, then take the old
one away (where I was told it got sent to the crusher).
On the server side of things, they were generally pretty expandable - if
you wanted higher performance, you just added more CPUs / disks /
backplanes, rather than fitting faster versions of individual components.
So, here's the question. Is my dream likely to
ever be possible enough that
a boutique shop could pull it off and not lose their shirt on the production
costs and R&D to do it ?
I think you'd be wasting your time, even if it could be done... for a lot
of tasks the CPU isn't the limiting factor anyway - disk speed, bus
bandwidth etc. all play a part, too.
Then there's the "what's the point?" angle... I mean, why take a vintage
machine that's dog-slow in comparison to modern hardware and try to make it
slightly less dog-slow?
cheers
Jules