---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash The Big Debate: Workstations vs. PCs for A/E/C SunFLASH Vol 37 #13 January 1992 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Arnst is market segment manager for A/E/C at Sun Microsystems, Inc. -johnj ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Jeff Arnst Sun Microsystems, Inc. Q: Have you ever considered using a workstation instead of a PC? A: Sure, and I've considered trading in my Ford for a Ferrari, too. My PC does what I need it to do, so why should I use a workstation? If I ever need that kind of performance, I'll just upgrade the PC. In the last four years, workstations have become the most popular platform for software development and delivery next to PCs for Architecture/Engineering/Construction, yet many misconceptions about their capabilities and costs still exist. While it is true that the distinctions between workstations and PCs are blurring, the two are not yet interchangeable. And understanding the differences that do exist can be critical to maximize your effectiveness. This article will provide a context for understanding the growing niche of workstations in the A/E/C industry, comparing and contrasting their capabilities with those of high-performance PCs. A Look at Market Dynamics Workstations emerged as a viable alternative in about 1987 because they were more powerful than PCs, yet less expensive and more functional than multi-user minis. There has been no need to compare workstations and PCs head-to-head until very recently. Traditionally, workstations were orders of magnitude more powerful and much more expensive than PCs and were used only in data-intensive or graphics-oriented applications. Today, several market forces are pushing workstations and PCs closer together. In the PC arena, customers have demanded faster processing speed, larger memory capacity, better graphics and improved networking capabilities. Vendors have responded with dramatic improvements in each of these areas. Desktop PC processors can now achieve as much as 12 MIPS performance; on-board RAM of 4 or 8 megabytes is common; graphics coprocessors and 24-bit color frame buffers are available; and a wide variety of networking products have been developed for local-area connectivity and even heterogeneous networking. At the same time, workstation customers have asked for better ease-of-use features, smaller size and lower prices. Vendors have delivered graphical user interfaces such as OPEN LOOK, high-performance desktop models such as the SPARCstation and price points under $5,000. The Critical Distinctions So what is left to distinguish workstations and PCs? Plenty. And though the differences may seem subtle, they are anything but trivial. False assumptions about capabilities can cause more than inconvenience; the computer equipment you select can impact your productivity. Operating System The most obvious difference between workstations and PCs is the operating system. Although different PCs run different operating systems (MS-DOS, the Macintosh Operating System, OS/2, etc.), workstations all run UNIX. It is true that different flavors of UNIX exist, but all versions have several important attributes in common characteristics that are not found in most PC operating systems. UNIX is a multi-tasking, multi-user operating system that was designed specifically for portability. These capabilities can be useful in a number of ways. With a multi-tasking operating system, multiple windows can run different processes simultaneously and the user can see them all on the screen at the same time. For example, the user can run a structural analysis in a window while creating detail drawings in another window and running cost estimates on Lotus in yet another window all without quitting any processes. Since DOS is a single-tasking operating system, PC users must close one application while processing in another. There is another benefit of multi-tasking and windowing. Studies indicate that engineers and architects spend only 40 to 50 percent of their time in actual design applications. The remaining time is spent alternating among managing projects, writing reports, creating budgets and corresponding with others. Seldom is one task finished before beginning the next. Since many popular business programs like dBase, Lotus, WordPerfect and AutoDesk run on UNIX users can utilize the power and special features of UNIX while running familiar software. As recognition of UNIX's advantages increases, more software firms are porting applications to this operating system. Hundreds of UNIX programs are available for A/E/C, including those from leading vendors like Autodesk, DCA Engineering, Auto-trol and CLM GTRC. These vendors find that their packages typically run better and faster under UNIX than DOS. Meanwhile, many vendors are developing new applications that take advantage of UNIX's features and offer expanded capabilities that increase productivity. More Memory, Please Civil engineers often use computers to analyze large, highly detailed data sets. Site surveys, for example, can easily contain 15,000 to 20,000 pairs of coordinates. A traditional DOS-based system requires a good deal of its 640 Kbytes of memory to process such a job. It also performs the analysis slowly. The problems of limited memory can be seen clearly in the following scenario. An engineer running AutoCAD or Auto Lisp on a DOS PC uses up much of its allotted memory on these programs. If he also creataes a 3-D model on the system, chances are that he will exceed 640 Kbytes. Therefore, only portions of the model can be addressed at one time, while the remainder must be passed back and forth from the main memory to the disk drive. This data swapping takes time. UNIX workstations, however, can easily handle a large data set, access the entire 3-D model immediately, with virtually unlimited memory for other tasks, such as plotting and analysis. A popular "band-aid" these days is to extend the DOS operating system of some high-end PCs to offer better memory, but it is still inadequate compared to the more powerful operating system. While PC vendors are upgrading their systems to meet the workstation challenge, it is questionable whether larger memory, like other workstation features, are best included on a PC, anyway. It is true that a PC can be equipped with extra memory, faster processors, UNIX, accelerated graphics, color frame buffers, networking and other workstations offerings for a price. Including the cost of these extras, a high-end PC can be priced more than a workstation and still not offer true workstation functionality. New Operating Systems for PCs Some PC users are hoping that Windows 3.0 or OS/2 will offer the greater capabilities they need today. It remains to be seen if these solutions will have any impact on the A/E/C area, since virtually no OS/2 or Windows 3.0 applications are available for civil engineers. Despite early predictions of future success for OS/2, this "second-generation" DOS has not lived up to expectations. Analysts are now attributing to UNIX the market growth OS/2 was supposed to achieve. Perhaps developer are choosing UNIX over OS/2 because UNIX runs on the full range of computer architectures and sizes from PCs to mainframes while OS/2 runs only on the Intel 80286 and 80386 processors. A portable version of OS/2 is not available, nor does this DOS follow-on support a multi-user environment. Overall, there is a significant maturity difference between OS/2 and UNIX. OS/2 has been in use only a few years, whereas UNIX has been continuously refined over the past two decades. While OS/2 shows great promise, many of the capabilities it aims at offering are already available and tested in UNIX. As for Windows, the problem remains that this is a 16-bit solution running on DOS, basically, with so much extra code to get the windows functionality that it bogs down the processor. Even on a '386 or a '486, Windows 3.0 cannot perform one task at a time: it's a non-productive environment. Meanwhile, UNIX was designed for performance, multi-tasking, windowing, networking and all the other capabilities today's user needs. Networking Support and Ease of Use Virtually unlimited memory, a rich operating system and numerous easy-to-use, popular applications are just part of the UNIX workstation solution. Its most significant strength is its networking -- which is, unlike PCs, built in. For example, NFS (Network File System), the industry standard for remote file sharing for different systems, is part of the kernel of many versions of UNIX. No networking software is built into DOS or OS/2. When it comes to the Mac, its Apple Talk is widely known for being slow and inferior to what UNIX offers. Today's workstations include built-in Ethernet ports, further simplifying connectivity. This requires a hardware add-on for many PCs. In terms of connectivity, UNIX networking software is designed to allow communication between multiple operating systems, so that each user on the network can have access to files regardless of where they reside. In addition, workstations offer fast networking, since UNIX supports multiple process schedulers that give background applications priority. The networking capabilities of DOS and MacOS PCs are limited. In the DOS environment, excellent local area networking products from Novell, 3Com and others make workgroup connectivity easy and inexpensive, but many are based on incompatible protocols. Novell and 3Com networks, for example, cannot communicate with each other. Macintosh networking products such as AppleTalk and AppleShare are also quite effective and extremely easy to use, but network speed is considerably slower than with either UNIX or OS/2. The PC world seems to be moving toward standardization on Portable NetWare and LAN Manager, but no clear standard has yet emerged. On the other hand, all UNIX networking products implement the Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), so all computers on UNIX-based networks can share files. What does all this networking mean to an A/E/C environment? Most civil engineering firms have a variety of professionals involved in a project surveyors, designers, engineers and record keepers. An ability to easily share computerized documents could make a major impact on productivity, which is one of the advantages UNIX workstations offer. Today, many tasks, like drawing documents, are done by hand. Or separate PCs do computerize the task but create "islands of automation" for each professional. However, UNIX workstations tie automation and connectivity together, with significant gains in turnaround and elimination of tedious, unnecessary work. In the past, the biggest advantage of PCs was perceived ease of use. But workstations have rapidly begun displacing PCs not only because of their falling prices -- they have become much simpler to operate from the days when they were aimed solely at technical users. For example, Sun Microsystems and AT&T designed OPEN LOOK , a user friendly interface based on the same concepts pioneered by Xerox that spawned the Macintosh. OPEN LOOK utilizes icons, pull-down menus and point and click methods. It is simple and intuitive while allowing users to take advantage of the full power of UNIX. The Distributed Computing Model The most important result of the differences between workstations and PCs is that workstations are well-suited for distributed computing applications while PCs, at least for the moment, are not. Distributed computing is essentially a division of responsibilities for a particular job among several computers. It is a way of maximizing the efficiency of computer resources by enabling each computer on the network to do what it does best. For example, a large design project can have several components: the application, a database, associated graphics and so on. Rather than process and store all these components on one individual system as is necessary without good networking capabilities the user can distribute them among several networked computers. The client application can be stored in a server and run on a supercomputer and query results and graphic output can be displayed on a workstation via a distributed windowing system such as X11. As the engineers do their work, they would draw data from the appropriate server in such a way as to be transparent to the user. Updates and changes to the design would be instantly shared across the network with the other users. When the need arose, segments of the design would simply be dispatched out onto the network to be changed and updated by the appropriate machine with the output appearing in a window on the user's workstation, all without user intervention. By having the network resources available to every user on the network, the individual workstations are free to be dedicated to their personal user while at the same time, each user has access to vastly more computing resources without having to sacrifice performance of his or her personal workstation. The real benefit of the distributed computing model is that it allows unobtrusive implementation of the appropriate technology. The ability to place multiple systems in the areas where they will be most efficient and the ability of these systems to interact at multiple levels means that end users have a wide range of choices for implementing solutions appropriate to their needs, both now and in the future. Flexibility lets the user configure systems in the ways that best fit his or her business model, instead of building the business around the computer. The Problems with Upgrading At this point, the fallacy of the concept of upgrading a PC to workstation performance should be apparent. The primary advantages of using a PC are that it is inexpensive and easy to use, offering convenient, low-cost local-area networking. Upgrading a low-end PC involves major expense (extra memory, networking hardware and software, additional disk space and larger monitors can add $4,000 to $7,000 making the PC more expensive than a workstation), and still cannot provide the advanced networking capabilities available with workstations. Thus the purpose of upgrading would seem to be defeated. On the other hand, the relatively large installed base of PC users and PC applications is a powerful motivation for remaining in the PC realm. It is also true that some applications simply do not, and will not soon, require more performance than PCs deliver. However, as we look down the road in the A/E/C arena, changes are apparent. It seems clear that applications will tend to become more integrated, and more data- and graphics-intensive, not less. As programs become larger and require more CPU overhead, the distributed computing model will take on increased importance; this will drive the growth of advanced operating systems such as UNIX. Those at the forefront of application development are already facing the tough tradeoffs between developing new applications for the large current installed base and spending more time and resources porting to UNIX. In the meantime, many users whose PCs are out of gas are looking to better alternatives. And fortunately, civil engineers currently using DOS PCs can make the move easily to UNIX without losing any of the data resident on the DOS system. Those running applications such as AutoCAD on a PC who have the UNIX version on a workstation just need to put the floppy disk from the PC into the workstation, or simply access the data across the network. The data doesn't care which operating system it runs other. The End Result Two things are clear amid all these considerations: first, the differentiation between workstations and PCs will continue to fade as PC vendors try to improve the capabilities of their systems. Second, as PC and workstation technology converges, the user is invariably the winner. Every advance in workstation or PC technology results in more choices, not tradeoffs, for people who use computers. And that is a trend we all like to see continue. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For information send mail to info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu and paris.cs.miami.edu. All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. Please contact your local Sales Representative for details of pricing and product availability in your region. Descriptions of, or references to products or publications within SunFlash does not imply an endorsement of that product or publication by Sun Microsystems. John McLaughlin, SunFlash editor, flash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. (305) 776-7770.