From chs1nt@surrey.ac.uk  Thu Feb 11 18:21:46 1993
From: Dr Nicholas P Tomkinson <chs1nt@surrey.ac.uk>
Message-Id: <9302111821.AA23452@central.surrey.ac.uk>
Subject: IBM vs. SGI
To: chemistry@ccl.net
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 18:21:46 GMT


Dear All, 	
	Here at Surrey we are intending to buy a major commercial 
computational chemistry package that will run on either IBM or SGI
platforms. I have a bias towards SGI, but IBM are cheaper. Leif Laaksonen
recently posted an article about SCARECROW in which he specifies SGI as
the only platform he has written for. Most comp. chem. software will run
on SGI or is in the process of being ported to SGI. Is it the case, as is
my feeling, that IBM is not yet supported to the same extent by the 
community? Would we be restricting ourselves by buying IBM rather than SGI, or
is it trivial to port from SGI to IBM - are there minor but irritating 
incompatibilites? All responses are appreciated - if there is enough 
response I will summarise to the list.
Nick Tomkinson