Hi!
We are considering buying a new computer for number crunching
applications. So far, we have been using an ageing P200 with Debian 2.1/2.2
on it, but it's taking several hours to process some data and there's some
money available X-). In principle, I have shortlisted two candidates for the
new "beast": an Athlon based system or an Alpha based system.
The use of these machines would be running custom programs in
fortran (using g77 as a compiler) or C (gcc),running mathematical software
such as scilab or octave, MuPAD. Also, I'd like to use
slatec/lapack/what_have_you and pgplot. Some discretionary use of Numerical
Python (in case you didn't know, it's really good :D) and latex/lyx/klyx.
Apart from those power uses, I tend to use e-mail and to surf the web,
sprinkled with "liberal amounts" of MP3ing X-)))
The reason for this e-mail is to actually try to get some facts with
which to decide which system we'll end up buying. I'm a bit weary that
whenever I stopped using it with Debian, chances are that someone will want
to install a MS-related OS (not *me*!!! I try my best to convince them, but
old habits are hard to kill :D), and given that MS will not be supporting
the Alpha in the future (I think. Question mark here), I'm a bit reluctant
to get one. Then there's also price. I know this is vendor dependant, but
the vendors given on DEC/Compaq's site do not shed any light on this.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks a lot,
Jose
--
Jose L Gomez Dans PhD student
Radar & Communications Group
Department of Electronic Engineering
University of Sheffield UK
