Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 23:40:22 02/24/99
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On February 24, 1999 at 19:16:42, Dann Corbit wrote: >On February 24, 1999 at 18:40:30, Bruce Moreland wrote: >>I sit in my house and occasionally buy a computer, which I take to these events. >> When I come back, I have to eat the thing for the next year or two. It becomes >>my development machine or my ICC machine or whatever. >> >>If I want to buy a computer, I should be able to buy a quality computer. I >>shouldn't be essentially forced to buy a crap machine so I can get an extra few >>mhz out of it. I don't want to have to buy a crappy case and a crappy >>motherboard and a crappy hard-disk, just so I can go 10% faster until the >>machine breaks. >I agree with the sentiment. But if your machine is a 'microcomputer' with a >1GHz Alpha chip which would cost $10,000 for the chip alone (were it available >to the public but isn't) is your machine a microcomputer while the 2 CPU PII 300 >MHz machine costing $4000 is not? I don't buy it. But I'm listening. If you want to say that you can get a machine that is 1) extremely fast, 2) extremely expensive, and 3) legal, rather than one that is 1) slower, 2) cheaper, and 3) illegal, I can't argue. Obviously the cheapest 2-cpu machine is less costly than the most expensive single-cpu machine. However, the legality or illegality of each of these machines in a WMCCC isn't in dispute at this point, the rules clearly state that the machine needs to be single-processor. Nobody has seriously challenged this yet. Is it time that this be changed? Sure, why not. In ten years things are going to be crazy, and a "microcomputer" as currently defined might not be something you can actually buy anymore, they might all be multi-processor for all we know. But none of this is what I am talking about. I have enough money that I can buy a nice development machine every once in a while. I don't have enough money that I can waste it on a machine that comes in just barely legal. I'm probably really screwed in this case, since the amount I spend on machines is fairly constant, so I can't even use last year's crappy machine this year, since it cost about as much as a new machine would cost this year. Single-processor might be an antiquated restriction. I think that probably all we are really left with is size. The thing, minus monitor, mouse, and keyboard, would need to weigh less than X pounds or have a volume less than Y cubic inches. That's what a microcomputer is, IMHO. >It's not terribly important to me, especially since I have not even written a >chess program and am therefore rather unlikely to get an invite. ;-) >However, I do think that in the name of fairness we should think about what the >"Microcomputer" championship means. If Joe can compete with a $50,000 machine >that no one can get even a full year later and Pete is kicked out because his >$4,000 machine has 2 CPU's, then something seems intrinsically unfair about it. The processor has to be "generally available", but the system itself doesn't. >I do realize that it is an opportunity for chipmakers to show off. I imagine >that they sponsor the thing in certain ways and if that is driving it then fine. > But we should call it the "Single CPU champion that fits in a cubic foot" >champion of the world. Calling it the microcomputer champion seems a bit of a >sham to me. Fair enough, but it's not the "cheap microcomputer" championship either. bruce
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