IBM vs. SGI

[Dr Nicholas P Tomkinson <chs1nt' at \`surrey.ac.uk>]

 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