[mhw]

A fun comparison: 20 years ago you could spend a large number of dollars (anyone remember how much?) on a dreamy Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Unix workstation. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Indigo%C2%B2_and_Challenge_... its specs included:

* MIPS CPUs ranging from the the R4000 to the R10000, with clock rates of up to 250MHz. (This project uses a related MIPS CPU that clocks at 600MHz.)

* Up to 512Mb of RAM, equal to that in this project. The Wikipedia articles explains that the Indigo2 hardware could theoretically support 1Gb of RAM, but the thermal output of the DRAM available at the time was too great for the enclosure.

* 100Mbit/s wired Ethernet network interface (this project provides 802.11n wireless networking, which Wikipedia claims will reach 600Mbit/s).

I find it staggering that the hardware that was once powering a high-end workstation is now being put to good use as a low power router. It's good to see that after all this time you can still run a version of Unix on the same hardware though.

[zokier]

> * 100Mbit/s wired Ethernet network interface (this project provides 802.11n wireless networking, which Wikipedia claims will reach 600Mbit/s).

This project has 2x 100Mbps wired Ethernets in addition to 300Mbps WiFi.

edit:

> * Up to 512Mb of RAM, equal to that in this project. The Wikipedia articles explains that the Indigo2 hardware could theoretically support 1Gb of RAM, but the thermal output of the DRAM available at the time was too great for the enclosure.

As user Wicher below notes, there seems to be bit/byte confusion here. So Indigo has still significantly more memory than this project.

[bluedino]

SGI's secret sauce was their 64-bitness and their 3D hardware. Their CPU/networking wasn't really anything special even at the time compared to Sun/DEC.

[justin66]

Not true in my experience. My R4400 and R10000 hardware always ran circles around SPARC workstations of the era and I wasn't a graphics developer.

[gcb0]

all the SGIs i got on enterprise/university auctions were used for networking tasks... i did got a couple full color cards and couple 3d cards (indy had 8 bit cards, 24 bit cards, and 8bit Z cards -- which were good for 3d. there was no 24bit 3d)

[bluedino]

Didn't they sell a stripped down Indy with no graphics capability under the Webforce line?

[justin66]

There was a stripped down, headless, Indigo2-based server. I'm not sure how much you could really strip down an Indy, though. It was already kind of their entry-level thing.

[gcb0]

i think that still had the 8bit card. but i may be wrong. also, i never had U$20k to pay for it when it launched, so i never saw their marketing :)

[wazoox]

I have an old SGI catalog, an Indigo2 Impact used to be about USD 30 000 to 40 000 in 1996, depending upon the configuration (Solid, High or Max Impact).

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Luckily hardware doesn't have feelings. I use mine as a footrest.

It is a pretty color, though.