Subject: Summary of NT vs UNIX question.

From: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 15:44:07 -0700

thanxs for all the responses

I'll include the summaries at the end and just summarize
(and comment) the summaries (and comments) here:

It seems like most people did not think it was feasible 
to run a comp.chem lab based on NT. Mainly because of
the lack of all tools that you get for free with unix.

I can support that, though I haven't seen NT in a while.
But I have seen that there are commercial (and free) products
that you can run on NT, bith csh and ksh is supported and
most unix commands like awk,grep sed etc exists. 
And the compiler environment (especially for C/C++) are excellent.
much better than on most unix boxes.

Most people recomended me to bye PC:s instead and run 
linux (or Next). My fear for that is that even if the 
price performance of a PC is unbeatable it is still
pretty far behind the best workstations in floating point
capacity. Both for NEXT and linux is the lack of a
god fortran compiler a problem too. I guess that solaris
for intel has a fortran compiler, but I haven't seen any
numbers for it.

arne

PS. These are the approximately prices that I'm talking about
All configurations for a descent workstation (64 mb mem, 1mb cache
1gb harddrive, descent monitor, scsi ...) 
Very very approximative prices (partly my guesses)

Name			Price	SpecFp	Specint	$/fp
PC-linux-pentium-133	$6000	110	140	55
PC-P6-180Mhz ('96)	$6000	230?	260?	27
Clone-Dec-alpha-21164	$19000	550	340	35
Clone-Dec-alpha-21064a	$12500	290	200	43
IBM-PowerPc		$8000	155	150	51
Dec-alpha-pc-21064	$14000	290	200	48

so the PC might look OK, but the price performance 
is not that staggering, I probably would go with it
if I could get a good fortran compiler. (aybee I can
talk Intel into port their compiler to linux (: 

arne

--------------------------------------------------------
               From: Arne Elofsson
         Email: [email-masked]   			
  WWW:  http://www.doe-mbi.ucla.edu/arne/main.html	

From: [email-masked] (Walter E. Reiher III)
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 10:09:38 -0700
To: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>

I've been using Windows NT as my primary platform for over a year now, but
on an Intel platform, not an Alpha.  While I'm an enthusiastic supporter of
NT over DOS/Windows, I'm not convinced that it's worthwhile for the
application you described.  In my opinion, it's not yet a replacement for
UNIX in our world (computational chemistry).

>1. I'm working on protein folding and some molecular
>   dynamics. Mainly using my own programs and Charmm.
>   And the normal tools people use on a workstation
Your mileage may vary, but have you actually looked at a FORTRAN compiler
for an Alpha NT workstation?  CHARMM is in FORTRAN.  Is it supported under
NT?  When I last worked with CHARMM, it had a lot of memory allocation stuff
in it that MAY prove difficult to port to a different OS.
     My primary gripe with NT is with FORTRAN compilers:  while excellent
development environments exist under NT for C/C++, FORTRAN is a really poor
cousin.  I've had a great deal of difficulty porting very standard, portable
comp chem apps from UNIX to NT and it's because of the compilers.
     Things might be better on an Alpha if you can get a FORTRAN from DEC.

>2. I'm starting a new lab in the fall, and will have 
>   to buy computers for me (and eventual gradstudents)
>   I will keep on developing software as well as running
>   programs. (CPU speed is my main goal)
Don't forget that time spent running programs is generally much less than
time spent writing them, and raw CPU speed alone isn't a good metric.

>3. I've been looking around and at the moment it seems as
>   if the best price/performance ratio is for some clone
>   makers building machines based on dec-alpha chips,
>   and maybee some other chips too. The problem is that
>   most of these systems do not run any unix but only
>   windows NT. For other systems the UNIX is much more 
>   expensive than Win-NT (for instance IBM:s PowerPC).
>   Therefore I'm considering using NT. (Even if I am
>   a UNIX freak.)
Look at the apps available under NT versus UNIX:  just be aware that you're
going to have to "blaze a trail" with NT.  I sure wish I could take
advantage of neat UNIX tools like PVM.

>4. Linux would be an alternative but the version for the
>   alpha is not out yet. (Last time I looked it was running
>   but networking and X wasn't up yet)
>
>My questions:
>
>1. Is any comp-chemistry groups using NT at all ?
>   If so what are your experiences ?
>2. Does anyone know about any molecular graphic
>   package that runs under NT. (Other than rasmol)
The only "serious" package I'm aware of under NT is HyperChem.  The group
I'm working with has developed its own graphics package, which can't be
distributed.

>3. Anyone have had any ecperience with NT for serious
>   computations, (i.e. just running jobs that take a 
>   long time and a lot of memory). Is there any benchmarks
>   that compare NT vs Unix. (Probably mainly effectiveness 
>   of compilers).
>4. What tools do people use under NT ?
I recently started using Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 (runs under NT only).
It's a very nice development environment for C.

>5. Am I completely stupid to consider this ?
>6. Will I really save money (when I sum up the cost of 
>   compilers and tools compared to unixlicenses etc)
I know grad student and postdoc time is free :-)!  Seriously, time should be
a factor here.  Be careful about the "economy" of clone computers.  Again,
things might be better in Alpha land, but I believe much more money is
wasted on the time taken to try to make "cheap" hardware work than was saved
on buying it in the first place.

Good luck!  Please summarize the responses.

Wally
========================================================================
Walter E. Reiher III, Ph.D.                            [email-masked]
Consultant in Computational Chemistry
P.O. Box 61056                                        voice 408-720-0240
Sunnyvale, CA 94088                                     fax 408-720-0378

From: [email-masked] (Joel A. Wolff)
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 09:03:07 -0400
To: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>

>
>My questions:
>
>2. Does anyone know about any molecular graphic
>   package that runs under NT. (Other than rasmol)

FYI, both CS ChemDraw (2D) and CS Chem3D (3D) run under Windows NT. At the
moment Chem3D only supports MM2, but we are working on adding better force
fields.

Joel A. Wolff, Ph.D.
Customer Service Manager
CambridgeSoft Corporation
875 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: (800) 315-7300 or (617) 491-2200
Fax: (617) 491-7203
Compuserve: 76070,615
Internet: [email-masked]
http://www.camsci.com

From: Jussi Eloranta <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 08:04:14 +0300 (EET DST)
To: [email-masked] (Arne Elofsson)
Content-Length: 674       

>4. Linux would be an alternative but the version for the
>   alpha is not out yet. (Last time I looked it was running
>   but networking and X wasn't up yet)

The distribution kit for aplha is out. I recall that you can download
it from gatekeeper.dec.com (?). The name was something like *blade* .
I don't know how stable system this is....

>My questions:
>
>1. Is any comp-chemistry groups using NT at all ?
>   If so what are your experiences ?

I haven't even seen one machine running NT. Even on intel platform....

regards,

Jussi

ps. I run mostly linux on P100 systems. I hear that P150 will be out
soon... I don't know then how it compares to the aplha systems.

From: Thomas Nhan <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 19:09:56 +48000
Reply-To: Thomas Nhan <[email-masked]>
To: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>

On Mon, 10 Jul 1995, Arne Elofsson wrote:

> Sorry for wasting the bandwidth but I'd really hear
> about peoples experiences using windows NT for serious
> computational chemistry work.

Well, I just want to state in advance that I have 3 buddies
 working @ Microsoft WinNT project and they don't have 
 windows installed on their system.  That should get one
 start thinking why :)

> So my story is:
> 3. I've been looking around and at the moment it seems as
>    if the best price/performance ratio is for some clone
>    makers building machines based on dec-alpha chips,
>    and maybee some other chips too. The problem is that
>    most of these systems do not run any unix but only
>    windows NT. For other systems the UNIX is much more 
>    expensive than Win-NT (for instance IBM:s PowerPC).
>    Therefore I'm considering using NT. (Even if I am
>    a UNIX freak.)

Not at all.  DEC stations may seem really fast to you because
 it has 2Mb internal cache with a RISC chip while Intel's
 chip has a measly 256 kb internal cache with 16 Mb of memory,
 and it's probably under 64 kb DOS constraint.  So if you want
 a fast machine, try getting more memory (>64 Mb) and a large 
 internal cache with EDO RAM.  With the same amount of money,
 you can get 5-6 P5-120 (or P6-166 when you get it).  You can
 run circle around that single DEC!

> 4. Linux would be an alternative but the version for the
>    alpha is not out yet. (Last time I looked it was running
>    but networking and X wasn't up yet)

Well, Linux has changed quite abit since you last look.  It is
 more popular than ever.  With _free_ accelerated graphics for
 X and _all_ the commercial unix programs are now available
 (e.g. Mathematica, Matlab, you choice of editors and emulators 
 for windows/mac/...)  Even Intel decided to help out by 
 providing optimizations for their Pentium to the free GCC and
 there is a free fortran compiler too (not Fortran->C translator)
 Besides the simple X and compiler, there are free implementations
 of practically everything now; they may not be 100% complete,
 but they are useable (e.g. LessTif for Motif, GNUStep for NeXTStep,
 MESA for OpenGL).

> My questions:

> 1. Is any comp-chemistry groups using NT at all ?
>    If so what are your experiences ?

Not that I know of.  People I know either use the high-end
 SGI for graphics, or low end pentium for number crunching.

> 2. Does anyone know about any molecular graphic
>    package that runs under NT. (Other than rasmol)

Nope.  But there are many for X and GL.

> 3. Anyone have had any ecperience with NT for serious
>    computations, (i.e. just running jobs that take a 
>    long time and a lot of memory). Is there any benchmarks
>    that compare NT vs Unix. (Probably mainly effectiveness 
>    of compilers).

Well, then you probably prefer your compiler to be tested
 and used by millions daily.  GCC used to generate slow
 code for Pentium because Intel did not provide support for 
 optimization codes.  But now, that should not hold anyone
 back from getting a cheap Intel or other PC-compatible.

> 4. What tools do people use under NT ?
> 5. Am I completely stupid to consider this ? 

Well,...

> 6. Will I really save money (when I sum up the cost of 
>    compilers and tools compared to unixlicenses etc)

Yes.  Even if you think Linux is fluff and go with NeXTStep,
 which will cost you about an additional $200/machine for 
 software.  Then you will get the support, X-window for simple
 graphics, and a great development platform.  With 5-6 Pentiums
 running in parallel, I doubt that even the top-of-the-line
 DEC can beat it.  By the end of the year, we should have our
 Pentium farms set up and see if they can match with our
 colleague's single Alpha :)

> Thanxs for any help

You are quite welcome.  Just look more carefully at other 
 alternatives before jumping in.  SGI and DEC are not the
 main source of graphics and speed anymore.  With the advent
 of standard graphics protocols (Xwindow and OpenGL are
 free) and cheap/free unix systems, the cheaper alternative
 will be from machines that was meant for game machines 
 for little kids :)  PC-compatibles are much cheaper to
 maintain than the proprietary workstations.
--
Thomas Nhan <[email-masked]>
Department of Chemistry
University of Washington

From: [email-masked] (Hugh Capper)
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 11:12:09 +1100
To: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>

Dear Arne,

I will answer your questions at the bottom.  I run a Molecular Graphics/
Computational Chemistry lab in the Dept of Pahrmacology at the Uni of Sydney.
We have an NT based system.

>Sorry for wasting the bandwidth but I'd really hear
>about peoples experiences using windows NT for serious
>computational chemistry work.
>
>So my story is:
>
>1. I'm working on protein folding and some molecular
>   dynamics. Mainly using my own programs and Charmm.
>   And the normal tools people use on a workstation
>
>2. I'm starting a new lab in the fall, and will have 
>   to buy computers for me (and eventual gradstudents)
>   I will keep on developing software as well as running
>   programs. (CPU speed is my main goal)
>
>3. I've been looking around and at the moment it seems as
>   if the best price/performance ratio is for some clone
>   makers building machines based on dec-alpha chips,
>   and maybee some other chips too. The problem is that
>   most of these systems do not run any unix but only
>   windows NT. For other systems the UNIX is much more 
>   expensive than Win-NT (for instance IBM:s PowerPC).
>   Therefore I'm considering using NT. (Even if I am
>   a UNIX freak.)
>
>4. Linux would be an alternative but the version for the
>   alpha is not out yet. (Last time I looked it was running
>   but networking and X wasn't up yet)
>
>My questions:
>
>1. Is any comp-chemistry groups using NT at all ?
>   If so what are your experiences ?

Yes we are.

>2. Does anyone know about any molecular graphic
>   package that runs under NT. (Other than rasmol)

We are using Gaussian on the NT box.  It is quite good and very stable.  We
have not had a crash in over 9 months.  The calculations are done quite
quickly.  On a cost/performance basis they are unbeatable.

>3. Anyone have had any ecperience with NT for serious
>   computations, (i.e. just running jobs that take a 
>   long time and a lot of memory). Is there any benchmarks
>   that compare NT vs Unix. (Probably mainly effectiveness 
>   of compilers).

The machine runs 64 Mbytes RAM but is also running the network and printers.
It has a 4 Gbyte HDD that it uses 3 Gbyte exclusively for scratch space for
Gaussian.  Gauusian needs HUGE scratch spaces no matter what operating
system you run.

>4. What tools do people use under NT ?

What do you means by tools?  We have all our presentation graphics,
including POVRAY and powerpoint running under NT.

>5. Am I completely stupid to consider this ?

No,  but we have found that there are not many other modelling packages that
run under NT at the moment.  We have Windows for Workgroups and RS-6000
running off the NT system.  Lots of people are getting Windows 95 compliant
packages ready at the moment.  These will run on NT. 

>6. Will I really save money (when I sum up the cost of 
>   compilers and tools compared to unixlicenses etc)

I think you probably will save money but that is something you will have to
workout.

I you have any further questions please contact me.
Hugh Capper
Biomolecular Computer Graphics Unit
Dept. of Pharmacology
The University of Sydney
NSW   2006
Australia
Tel 61 2 351 4308
Fax 61 2 351 3868

From: [email-masked] (David Case)
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 95 17:49:19 PDT
To: [email-masked]

>    Therefore I'm considering using NT. (Even if I am
>    a UNIX freak.)

I find implausible that any momentary advantage in "price/performance"
you might find with a Win-NT would outweigh the disadvantages of 
leaving UNIX, given the above statement.  Don't underestimate all of the
free software you get with Unix (stuff that really works for computational
chemistry, and for which source code is included to allow you to move
it to new platforms as you buy them.)
> 
> 4. Linux would be an alternative but the version for the
>    alpha is not out yet. (Last time I looked it was running
>    but networking and X wasn't up yet)

You could try this:  get a machine that has Linux now, get your lab up
and running (maybe a little slower than you would like, but with
all the stuff you need).  Then, when the time comes to buy a second machine,
see if an alpha or power-pc (or whatever) version is available at that
time.

...just my $.02

...dave case

From: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>
Subject: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 17:27:50 -0700
To: [email-masked]
Sender: Computational Chemistry List <[email-masked]>

Sorry for wasting the bandwidth but I'd really hear
about peoples experiences using windows NT for serious
computational chemistry work.

So my story is:

1. I'm working on protein folding and some molecular
   dynamics. Mainly using my own programs and Charmm.
   And the normal tools people use on a workstation

2. I'm starting a new lab in the fall, and will have 
   to buy computers for me (and eventual gradstudents)
   I will keep on developing software as well as running
   programs. (CPU speed is my main goal)

3. I've been looking around and at the moment it seems as
   if the best price/performance ratio is for some clone
   makers building machines based on dec-alpha chips,
   and maybee some other chips too. The problem is that
   most of these systems do not run any unix but only
   windows NT. For other systems the UNIX is much more 
   expensive than Win-NT (for instance IBM:s PowerPC).
   Therefore I'm considering using NT. (Even if I am
   a UNIX freak.)

4. Linux would be an alternative but the version for the
   alpha is not out yet. (Last time I looked it was running
   but networking and X wasn't up yet)

My questions:

1. Is any comp-chemistry groups using NT at all ?
   If so what are your experiences ?
2. Does anyone know about any molecular graphic
   package that runs under NT. (Other than rasmol)
3. Anyone have had any ecperience with NT for serious
   computations, (i.e. just running jobs that take a 
   long time and a lot of memory). Is there any benchmarks
   that compare NT vs Unix. (Probably mainly effectiveness 
   of compilers).
4. What tools do people use under NT ?
5. Am I completely stupid to consider this ?
6. Will I really save money (when I sum up the cost of 
   compilers and tools compared to unixlicenses etc)

Thanxs for any help

arne

--------------------------------------------------------
               From: Arne Elofsson
         Email: [email-masked]   			
  WWW:  http://www.doe-mbi.ucla.edu/arne/main.html	

-------This is added Automatically by the Software--------
-- Original Sender Envelope Address: [email-masked]
-- Original Sender From: Address: [email-masked]
[email-masked] -- everyone     | [email-masked] -- coordinator
[email-masked]: HELP CHEMISTRY  | Gopher: www.ccl.net 73
Anon. ftp www.ccl.net     | [email-masked] -- archive search
http://www.ccl.net/chemistry.html |     for info send: HELP SEARCH to MAILSERV

From: [email-masked] (ARSoftware Corporation)
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 09:28:42 -0400
To: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>

>Dear Arne Elofsson,

May I suggest you give Dr. Kenneth Tupper a call at ARSoftware, he does some
heavy duty computational chemistry work in Windows NT.  He can be reached at
301-459-3773.

John Parikh

=====================================================
ARSoftware Corporation
8201 Corporate Drive
Landover, MD  20785
Phone:  (301) 459-3773
FAX:    (301) 459-3776

e-mail: [email-masked]

From: [email-masked] (Hinsen Konrad)
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 21:51:53 -0400
To: [email-masked]

   3. Anyone have had any ecperience with NT for serious
      computations, (i.e. just running jobs that take a 
      long time and a lot of memory). Is there any benchmarks
      that compare NT vs Unix. (Probably mainly effectiveness 
      of compilers).

No first-hand experience, but I know some people (not in science)
who have seriously considered NT for other computationally intensive
tasks. They concluded that NT is in the same ballpark as most
modern Unix versions as far as the OS is concerned. The choice
of compilers is necessarily smaller, and their quality probably
CPU-dependent. I wouldn't expect problems for C and C++, but
Fortran could be a problem.

   5. Am I completely stupid to consider this ?

Considering alternatives is never stupid. But think of the
indirect costs: you won't be able to use most of the
PD software written for Unix, and you and your students
will need time to get used to a new system. And who is
going to do system administration? I don't know
how big the difference in OS license costs is, but I would
be surprised if it were relevant compared to the costs
(personnel time) of using a machine and keeping it
running.

   6. Will I really save money (when I sum up the cost of 
      compilers and tools compared to unixlicenses etc)

No idea, but it's not going to be an easy comparison...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: [email-masked]
Departement de chimie             | Tel.: +1-514-343-6111 ext. 3953
Universite de Montreal            | Fax:  +1-514-343-7586
C.P. 6128, succ. A                | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/Nederlands/
Montreal (QC) H3C 3J7             | Francais (phase experimentale)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Joel Polowin)
Subject: Re:  CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 95 12:39:52 -0400
To: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>

Hi, Arne.
 
> 1. Is any comp-chemistry groups using NT at all ?
>    If so what are your experiences ?
> 2. Does anyone know about any molecular graphic
>    package that runs under NT. (Other than rasmol)
> 3. Anyone have had any ecperience with NT for serious
>    computations, (i.e. just running jobs that take a 
>    long time and a lot of memory). Is there any benchmarks
>    that compare NT vs Unix. (Probably mainly effectiveness 
>    of compilers).

Well, for what it's worth, we've got a version of HyperChem that runs under
NT on the DEC Alpha; its cost seems to be reasonable compared with other
software (academic price for Release 4 is US$1250).  As for power, we get
about the same kind of performance with our stuff on a Pentium as with the
DEC Alpha and with a variety of UNIX boxes -- regardless of platform, I get
a more-or-less linear plot of computational speed (1/calculation time) vs.
processor speed.  Obviously there are a lot of variables, what with different
hardware and operating system setups, but working on an Alpha certainly
doesn't appear to be unreasonable.  I'll append our benchmarking info below.

Regards,
Joel

------------
Joel Polowin, Ph.D.   Manager, Scientific Support
Email to: [email-masked] 

Hypercube Inc, 419 Phillip St, Waterloo, Ont, Canada N2L 3X2 (519)725-4040
Info requests to: [email-masked]    Support questions to: [email-masked]
Email group: Send "subscribe hyperchem" to [email-masked]
WWW: http://www.hyper.com/

MNDO energy and gradient for C60, converged to 1e-2, without DIIS:

Computer                  Time (s)     Rel. speed
486DX 50 MHz                375             1
Pentium 90 MHz              87.6           4.28
DECpc AXP 150 MHz           59.8           6.27
SGI Indy R4000SC 100 Mhz    77.8           4.82
IBM RS/6000-250 66 MHz      51.8           7.24  (? - this is way off the line)
DEC 3000 200 MHz (I think)  42.4           8.84

The first two numbers are for full HyperChem (user interface and
calculation module) running on the same processor under Windows 3.11.
The third is for full HyperChem running under Windows NT.
The last three are for the computation module running on the unix
computer with the HyperChem user interface running on a 486.  All
times are wall clock times for start to finish observed on the PC.

All times are for HyperChem R4.  The 486DX 50 MHz is a clone with
128k secondary cache and 20Mb RAM.   The Pentium 90 MHz is a
Dell Dimension XPS 90 with 256k secondary cache and 16Mb RAM.
The SGI Indy 100MHz is an R4000SC with 1Mb secondary cache and
64Mb RAM.  I don't know the cache/memory configurations of the
IBM or DEC.  All times were measured with a hand held stopwatch
when machines were "quiet" (no other users) but not in single user
mode.  The maximal optimization switches that produced working code
(-O2 for the RISCs I believe) were set for all compilations, and the
source code was identical.

From: "Michael D. Bartberger" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: CCL:Windows NT for computational chemistry ?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 00:38:39 -0400 (EDT)
To: Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]>

Dear Arne:

You may wish to take a serious look at Solaris x86.  The folks at Sun 
have released this, and for a short time a while ago they were offering 
this for a special academic price of $99, although I think this is no 
longer the case.

As far as benchmarks, I am not really certain, although I'm sure there 
are people at Sun who can help you out with this.   For starters, you may 
wish to have a look at http://www.sun.com.

Our sysadmin here did buy some copies of this (he is starting his own 
business (internet access provider) and from what I understand, he has 
been extremely pleased with its performance on some P-90s.  I can give 
you his e-mail address if you would like to speak with him directly (let 
me get his permission first)    :-)

The nice thing about Solaris x86 is that (1) it is "officially" 
supported, and (2) really anything that "makes" on Sparc architeture 
should, in theory, "make" on Solaris x86.      Unfortunately, I     (1) 
did not respond in time to the $99 offer,   (2) am too busy (and too 
cheap)  ;)  to buy it at the moment and install it on one of my machines  
and (3) do not yet know of anyone who has tried out some of the common
computational codes under Solaris x86, although in principle they should
work if they do so on the Sun Sparcs.

This might be an effective low-cost alternative to pricy UNIX 
workstations, and you can still remain within your beloved UNIX 
environment.   :)      Furthermore, the "bang for the buck" in terms of 
speed / performance of the various flavors of UNIX on PC architechture is 
quite respectable.  If I recall correctly, someone posted here that a 
P-100 running Linux was competitive with an RS6000/550.

With Solaris x86 on a past Pentium  you'd get the performance of a "real" 
OS (not to mention support) at a decent price.

I would be extremely interested in any information you receive regarding 
benchmarks.

I hope this helps.  

Regards,

Michael

________________________________________________________________________________

 Michael D. Bartberger         [email-masked]        TEL: (904) 392-3580
 Department of Chemistry       [email-masked]         FAX: (904) 846-0296
 University of Florida
 Gainesville, FL  32611
 USA
________________________________________________________________________________

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Help with (possible) migration from Unix to NT
Date: 12 Jul 1995 11:36:13 GMT
To: [email-masked]

In article <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] (Arne Elofsson) (Arne Elofsson) wrote:

> I'd like to know if it is a feasible solution to try
> to build a lab on NT machines ?

Sure, you are correct that you get a lot more bang for the buck
on Windows NT than in the typical UNIX workstation world.

> What compilers (mainly on an  alpha) are good. 
> Are they compatible between C and fortran ?

On Windows NT/Alpha you have Visual C++ 2.0. I have also
heard that a port of the GNU C compiler is in progress. DEC has
DEC Fortran for Windows NT/Alpha. You should be able to
call DEC FORTRAN subroutines from VC++ 2.0.

-- 
- Olav Tollefsen
- Microsoft Norway
- 
- Nothing I have written here is in any way, shape, or form official
- Microsoft policy or opinion, and should not be represented as such
- when quoted here or in any other forum.  

From: "Noah W. Allen" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Windows NT
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 10:54:52 -0400 (EDT)
To: [email-masked]
Content-Length: 1036      

Arne:

As a former IBM and AT&T OS Engineer I would like to encourage you to
continue looking for alternatives to the Windows NT OS Platform.  I'm
presently doing work in computational chemistry using SGI
workstations and would refuse explicitly to leave the UNIX
environment.  Linux for the DEC Alpha chip is due out near the 4Q of
this year, maybe with a confirmation it would be worth the wait.  I'm
preferential to that version of UNIX lately.  It's quite accomodating
on many regards.  Windows NT is a disaster in all regards.  I have
had minimal success with it handling major throughput, and excess CPU
speeds with bandwidth requirements.  It's simply not reliable, and I
wouldn't consider it.  I have a colleague using it who is a windows
freak (which I am not) and he even relents to it's shortcomings
involving networking and task management.  It's just short of
functional.

Good luck with your decision and if I find more information about
this for you, I'll let you know.

Noah Allen
UNC Wilmington
Department of Chemistry
From: [email-masked] (Frank Eisenmenger)
Subject: alpha & modelling, simulations
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 11:16:46 +0200 (MET)
To: [email-masked]
Content-Length: 2279      

 Hi Arne,

 when I came into my group 1.5 years ago, they just bought 5 alpha-PC (150 MHz)
 running NT 3.1 without any compiler, just emulating DOS with a speed of a 286
 After a while I got NT 3.5, which gives you the power of a 486, if you emulate
 DOS or Windows. Then I found a very good FORTRAN compiler from DEC, which
 makes my programs as fast as on our R4000 SGI. And finally, I put OSF/1
 (now DEC Unix) on one of those PC which  makes the same programs
 (molecular mechanics with real*8 work) 1.4 times faster. These days
 you can buy 233 MHz alpha-Stations which are told to be 233/150 times faster.

 So far, we could not find any decent  C-compiler for NT (there is one
 adapted by Microsoft which seems not to work under NT 3.5). Therefore
 you cannot expect many things to be ported under NT. Better try DEC
 unix in any case with the alpha chip.

 If you want to develop programs and test them, then Linux on Pentium
 (with correct processor) is a very good idea to have. I tried the g77
 FORTRAN compiler and found it to be ok, for portable code at least.

 Concerning graphics: now one can beat SGI with their GL in terms of
 the number of (public domain) programs written/implemented for. There
 might be a GL-library which can be purchased for DEC unix (?).

 N.B. I am not a memeber of any of these firms mentioned above. 

 I think, a the guy who can really tell you most about alphas is
 Mrigank form India (he is also on the CCL-list and will answer you,
 I reckon).

 Good luck,

Frank Eisenmenger
 
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Institute of Biochemistry                                              |
| Medical Faculty of the Humboldt-University (Charite)                   |
|                                                                        |
| Hessische Str. 3-4                                                     |
| 10115 Berlin, Germany                                                  |
|                                                                        |
| Phone: +49-30-28468-612 or -239       FAX: +49-30-28468-600            |
| E-mail: [email-masked]                                |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

From: "Carl J. Appellof" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Help with (possible) migration from Unix to NT
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 09:21:21 -0700
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
To: [email-masked]

[email-masked] (Arne Elofsson) (Arne Elofsson) wrote:
>
>What compilers (mainly on an  alpha) are good. 
>Are they compatible between C and fortran ?
>
>What tools are people using ?

The C compiler for Alpha NT is Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 for Alpha.
It has the same front end as the Intel version, but the back end
produces code for Alpha.  I believe that Digital has a FORTRAN compiler
for NT too.

I use emacs 19.29 on my NT Alpha system.
Many UNIX utilities like sed and tar have been ported to NT.
See if you can get a copy of the free "Digital Roadmap for NT" CD
from your local Digital people.  It has copies of many of these
utilities.

Carl Appellof

---

From: [email-masked] (Harry C. Johnson)
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 17:04:28 -0700

>>>>> "Arne" == Arne Elofsson <[email-masked]> writes:

    Arne> Most people recomended me to bye PC:s instead and run linux
    Arne> (or Next). My fear for that is that even if the price
    Arne> performance of a PC is unbeatable it is still pretty far
    Arne> behind the best workstations in floating point
    Arne> capacity. Both for NEXT and linux is the lack of a god
    Arne> fortran compiler a problem too. I guess that solaris for
    Arne> intel has a fortran compiler, but I haven't seen any numbers
    Arne> for it.

You might check into g77, the GNU project's Fortran 77 compiler.  I
don't have any experience with it, but their C/C++ compilers are well
respected.  It is very young, but was in alpha testing for quite some
time.

Note:  This is NOT the same as the f2c compiler/translator.  g77 is
supposed to be a full fortran compiler.

Just a thought.
-Harry

+-----------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
|Harry C. Johnson IV    |  ______________  | E-Mail: [email-masked] |
|Computational Chemist  |  \  _________	/  | Phone:  (714)955-2120   |
|Wavefunction Inc.      |   \ \\\\\\\\/	   | Fax:    (714)955-2118   |
|18401 Von Karman       |    \ \\\\\/	   |                         |
|Suite 370              |     \	\\/        | "Seems to me its all    |
|Irvine, CA 92715       |      \/	   |  just chemistry" - RUSH |
+-----------------------+------------------+-------------------------+